


Tomorrow Is Just Another Lie

by R_W_Daniels



Series: Flying To Wyoming [2]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Alcohol, Apocalypse, Awkward Adolescent Feelings, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drama, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Humor, Lemon, One Shot, Original Character(s), Relationship(s), Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 21:29:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2040879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R_W_Daniels/pseuds/R_W_Daniels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riley Abel is turning sixteen. Like every other student at the Boston Military Preparatory School, she has to declare her intentions post-graduation. At the end of the semester, she will have to leave the school. Will she join the faceless, helpless ranks of the civilians? Or will she become a soldier instead? Is there a third way? And can she hold on to her friendship with her best friend knowing that they will soon be separated? And is her friend becoming something more than a friend?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomorrow Is Just Another Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, TLOU fans. And an extra special hello to the Ellie/Riley fans among you! 
> 
> Yes, this story has a healthy dose of Ellie/Riley sprinkled throughout. I’m using an interview that Druckmann gave to Wired magazine regarding the backstory of the Left Behind DLC. The following quote from that interview became a springboard for this story:
> 
> “[Regarding the falling out Riley had with Ellie] …I had discussions with the actors about what if there was a time where maybe they got a little intimate and Riley saw it as a way of giving up her dreams, so she lashed out. She took all her frustrations about not being able to join the Fireflies and find her purpose in this world and just lashed out at Ellie and disappeared.”
> 
> So there had to be more between them than just the kiss we saw in the DLC. This is my attempt to fill in the gap. I don’t deal directly with the moment Riley leaves Ellie (that comes later in a different chapter), but I do deal with the intimate moment that would sadly become the wedge between them.
> 
> This extended one-shot was originally meant to be the opening chapter to volume two of “Flying To Wyoming,” but as I worked on it, the story grew to a ridiculous length. And since I’m a little behind on volume two (I’ve been working lots of twelve hour shifts this summer), I’m releasing this story as stand alone prologue to the upcoming volume. Hopefully it will tide you guys over for another month or so until “Miles To Go”, the second volume, is ready to post.
> 
> For those who haven’t read Flying To Wyoming, I would suggest you read that first before reading this, as this story is packed with OCs and references to events that took place in that volume. If you don’t want to read all twenty chapters (or if you want to refresh your memory), then I’d suggest you read “Chapter 14: The Dead Enders” and “Chapter 19: Diesel” first as those are the ones that lay most of the groundwork for this story.
> 
> Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy my Riley-centric tale, and I’ll see you with “Miles To Go” in another month or so.

**“TOMORROW IS JUST ANOTHER A LIE”**   
**Prologue To Flying To Wyoming II: Miles To Go**

 

**[May 13, 2033]**

**[0531]  
** Riley wakes up earlier than usual. She never gets up before her roommate. Being an early riser has been ingrained into Ellie Williams since she was little. Orphanages are all the younger girl has ever known. They’ve left their mark on her. First out of bed while the room was still quiet and she could be alone with her thoughts before the world got crowded like it always does; first into the showers while the water was still warm and the soap was plentiful and she didn’t have to be naked in front of too many people; first in line for chow while the food was still edible, while the powdered eggs and dehydrated milk were still hot enough and cold enough respectively that it didn’t make you gag; first out the door before they start pulling students aside for special work details, having learned the hard way that out of sight is out of mind and it paid to make yourself scarce before somebody volunteered you for something.

Ellie is such a self-motivated kid that she could probably be an “A” student if she would just apply herself. But not Riley. She didn’t grow up at a children’s home, or bounce around the foster home system before coming here, to the Boston Military Preparatory School, raised with hardship since birth, like Ellie was. No, Riley had a good home and loving parents and a somewhat normal life – or what could reasonably pass for normal for an honest working man who wasn’t a FEDRA employee, a good man like her dad, just trying to get by in this fucked up world. Things had been mostly good for Riley and her family. For a while, at least. Until she was almost thirteen and all of it was taken away from her by a careless stranger with an easily transmittable infection. Her father lost his mind and killed her mother. Riley lost her soul and killed her father. And now she is here, just one more unloved, forgotten, warehoused orphan, like Ellie. Riley has tried to make her peace with it over the last three years, but she could never quite let go of the life she once had. Ellie has never known anything else. The young girl sleeps well, most nights. Riley doesn’t.

 

 **[0548]**  
On the bottom bunk, Ellie wakes up early, like always. She stretches, yawns, squeaks. It brings a smile to Riley’s face. She likes Ellie a lot. Riley has several friends her own age at this school, but somehow this goofy little freshman has become the best friend she’s ever had.

She listens to Ellie’s morning ritual begin: Slip out of the covers (unlike Riley, Ellie doesn’t toss and turn, and she never pulls the sheets loose); make the bed, tucking the corners of the sheets, pulling the bedding tight (you can bounce a quarter off of Ellie’s sheets when she’s done with them); get dressed (Ellie sleeps naked unless it’s cold or damp, and even then she doesn’t like to wear much); hide her switchblade behind the electrical outlet on the far wall, using an old coin called a “dime” to remove the single screw from the battered, cracked cover plate (that knife is all she has left of the mother she never knew). Riley waits to hear the sounds of Ellie picking up the room, tidying up from their game of Monopoly the night before (the younger girl had been a real brat yesterday, so Riley had made her play as the wheelbarrow. Ellie had whined and whined about it, but she did as she was told, like always).

But Ellie doesn’t gather up the little green and red houses and all the paper money piled up on Riley’s end of the board. She does something else instead. With a soft scuffing noise, the young girl drags something across the ratty, carpeted floor. The frame of the bunk bed creaks as Ellie grabs the edge and pulls herself up. Riley keeps her eyes shut and pretends to be asleep. Ellie’s breath is warm on her cheek as the girl begins to sing.

“Happy birthday to you,” she croons adorably. “Happy birthday to you…”

Riley opens one eye and smiles at her young friend. Ellie grins as widely as she can, sure that she has just woken Riley up in the best way possible. “Happy birthday, dear Rileeeeeeey,” she sings softly, really putting her all into it. “Happy birthday to yoooooooou.”

Riley chuckles. Ellie is so full of life. And joy. And love.

“Morning, boo,” Riley murmurs sleepily.

“Gooooood morning, Riley,” Ellie brims, overflowing with happiness. “Feel any older today?”

“I feel like I’m about to kick your skinny little butt for waking me up early,” Riley lies.

“C’mon! It’s May 13th! You’re sweet sixteen today! I woke up you up early so your birthday would be just a little bit longer,” Ellie insists with an incredibly sincere smile. She adds smugly, with arched eyebrows, “No need to thank me, by the way. That’s what friends are for.”

“Chipper little shit,” Riley groans. “What the hell are you standing on, anyway?”

“Laundry basket. It’s pretty full. Perfect stepladder. Who knew?”

“It’s full? I wonder why that is,” Riley deadpans. Doing the laundry is Ellie’s job. She rarely does it without the threat of physical violence. Riley sighs, knowing that someone is getting put into an arm lock after class later this evening. Riley is not one to wear dirty socks gracefully.

“I’m gonna do it, I promise!” Ellie grouses, a little stung. She’s been promising to wash their ever-growing pile of clothes for days now. “Now get up, birthday girl. It’s time to start your special day.”

She tugs gently on Riley’s shoulder, warm beneath the sheets. It’s too much bubbly cuteness for Riley. She groans, rolls over to face the wall. She wishes she had a fart loaded and ready to go. Ellie deserves it. Now that the young girl has packed the laundry down deeper into the basket by standing on it, Ellie can safely ignore the dirty garments for another few days. Until the socks run out, at the earliest.

Riley groans into her pillow, feigning grumpiness she doesn’t actually feel. “If I’d known you were a morning person, I would have never let them move you in here with me, girl.”

“Too late,” Ellie giggles, climbing up. “You can’t give me away now. You’re stuck with me.”

“What are you doing, you little shit pickle?” Riley giggles, feeling Ellie slide under the covers with her. The smaller girl spoons close to Riley, her small arm wrapping snugly around her older friend’s waist. Ellie sighs happily, nuzzling close to her best friend in the world.

“Sleeping in with you, lazy bones,” Ellie murmurs, settling her cheek into what little pillow Riley is willing to share.

“Sleeping in? On a school day?” Riley mocks. “ _You?_ Are you high or something? I know I left you homeless after last night’s Monopoly game, but don’t tell me you sold your rusty old wheelbarrow to buy drugs, girl.”

“I’m high on life,” Ellie yawns, so close and so warm and so adoring. “You’re my drug, Riley. You know that.”

It would sound weird coming from anyone else, but somehow Ellie makes it seem like a perfectly normal thing to say. They’ve been roommates for almost a year now and they both know that Ellie is a lesbian, even if they never say the word out loud. Riley isn’t. They both know that too, but she’s content to let Ellie crush on her a little. She loves Ellie, just not quite in that way. Although at moments like this, when Ellie is in such close, intimate, physical contact with her, Riley has the occasional, quick flash of doubt. The sensation of Ellie pressed so close to her, both of them wearing only light shirts and underwear… Riley feels a pleasant warmth in a place that she doesn’t expect to. She tells herself that it’s something else and does her best not to think about it. Behind her, Ellie sighs gently, a sound so soft and endearing that it makes Riley’s heart swell just a little. Ellie loves her so much. No one else cares for her this much, not really, not like this young girl does.

Riley weaves her fingers into Ellie’s, their hands resting together across her stomach, butterflies dancing beneath her smooth brown skin. She reminds herself that it’s nothing. It’s not sexual. It’s just… something.

“Mmmmm… That’s nice.” Ellie mumbles, and Riley can practically hear her smiling back there. “Almost like we’re holding hands.”

“Gotta keep you from trying to grab my tits, you little carpet muncher,” Riley teases, daring to call out Ellie a little bit, even if it is in jest. Easily denied, if Ellie wants that. She’s leaving her friend a way out. Just in case.

“Shit!” Ellie giggles. “And just as I was to about to make my move! I knew I should’ve gone for those sweet jugs as soon as I got up here. Oh well… Maybe next year, right?”

But there won’t be a next year. Riley is sixteen today. At the end of this semester, she will leave the military academy and Ellie will be on her own. Riley squeezes Ellie’s small hand tightly and the young girl presses in as close as she can. Time is running out for them. They drift off to sleep together and nothing has ever felt so right to Riley as laying here in Ellie’s arms.

 

 **[0701]**  
The prerecorded sound of ‘Reveille’ fades from the hallway speakers. On every floor of the dormitory, students are getting out of bed. They have one hour before they are called to assembly in the concrete plaza out front. One hour to get dressed and get ready to face the day.

Ellie twists the little red plastic, tomato-shaped kitchen timer in her hands, adding minutes to it, ready to place it on the mattress down by their feet. Riley often uses this timer to sleep in a bit, while Ellie putters around the room. Riley is not a morning person.

“Thirty minutes?” Ellie asks.

“Sounds good,” Riley groans, yawning.

When Ellie settles down on the mattress again, Riley has rolled over, facing her. Ellie starts to roll over too, to face the room, to let Riley spoon behind her for a while. But the older girl stops her with a firm hand on her shoulder. Wordlessly, she indicates that she wants Ellie to face her as they lie in bed. Ellie’s eyebrows go up. Riley never does this. She isn’t sure that she’s reading her older friend correctly. She doesn’t want to let her own complicated feelings for Riley cloud her judgment on this matter. That might be a good way to get punched in the face, and it’s way too early in the morning for that.

“Riley…?” she ask in her smallest voice.

“Just like this. Okay?” Riley says, her eyes saying something that Ellie is sure she must be misreading. Riley never needs. Riley is never weak. That can’t be what she’s seeing.

Ellie blushes, swallows loudly, nods enthusiastically, without saying a word. They’ve never lain together like this, facing each other. It’s incredibly intimate. Riley can tell that Ellie wants to kiss her. Or be kissed by her. Ellie never gives up hope.

“Wanna talk?” Riley asks.

“Sure. Always. Watcha wanna talk about?” Ellie responds.

“About the future,” Riley answers, adding quietly, “And don’t say anything about spaceships, you little dork, or I’ll slap you silly.”

Ellie giggles. “So… time machines then?”

Riley smiles faintly. ”Fuck. I wish I had a time machine, boo.”

“Me too,” Ellie replies, a bit sadly.

Minutes pass. No words are spoken. Riley can see that Ellie loves her. Ellie knows that she is loved. Words are unnecessary. Still, Riley gropes for them. She has something to say, even though she fears that speaking the words will ruin this wonderful morning.

“Semester ends in fourteen weeks, Ellie.”

“Semester just started, Riley,” the young girl replies breezily, as though there’s nothing to worry about. “Two weeks down, fourteen to go. Plenty of time left.”

A long moment passes. The city outside their window is slowly coming to life. Outside, in the hallway, the voices of girls making their way to the showers can be heard faintly. Ellie stirs slightly, nuzzling against Riley’s forehead, savoring the contact.

“Fourteen weeks, Ellie. It’s not that long.”

“I’m trying not to think about it,” the younger girl admits glumly. Beneath her happy exterior, Ellie is hiding a lot of sadness. She usually hides it well, but Riley is digging for it, wanting to share her pain, needing to find a special kind of honesty with her young friend.

“That won’t help,” Riley says, wondering if Ellie thinks she’s being cruel for even bringing it up.

“It might,” Ellie says, trying to make a joke, like she always does. “Maybe we’ll get abducted by aliens between now and then. Or maybe we’ll find the door to a magical land at the back of the closet, right?”

“We gotta talk about this, Ellie.”

“No, we don’t,” she protests, almost whining. “Not today. It’s your _birthday_ , Riley.”

“That’s right. And I have to make a decision today.”

She’s sixteen. Every student here has to make a decision on their sixteenth birthday. Declare, one way or the other, whether they’re going to stand up and do what’s right and protect this city, or shirk their duties and let others do the hard work like a coward. That’s what she’s been told. It’s what all the students have been told.

“You’re not going to join the army,” Ellie says as soothingly as she can. “You hate FEDRA more than _anyone_. Being a civvie will suck, sure…but we’ll get by. I know we will.”

“ _We?_ ” Riley teases, one eyebrow raised. “You’re not even a sophomore yet. You’ve got two more years until you graduate, _new girl_.”

“Yeah… but…” Ellie stammers, desperate to avoid the truth, eager to find any way short of a time machine to escape the moment of their inevitable separation.

“Ellie…” Riley begins.

“Day pass!” Ellie exclaims, a cunning plan coming to her out of the blue, all at once. A lightning bolt of inspiration. “I’ll get a day pass! Every Sunday! I’ll be the model fucking student! You’ll see! I’ll get a day pass and we can see each other every Sunday. I will. I swear!”

“Ellie –“ Riley says, pressing on.

“I will, Riley! I will!” Her green eyes are pleading. “I can do it. We don’t have to stop being friends just because you’re gonna graduate. It’s just for two years. Don’t ditch me, Riley. _Please!_ We can still stay together!”

“I’m not going to ditch you, Ellie,” Riley says, her heart melting at the relief that washes over her young friend’s pretty face. Damn, she has never really noticed how pretty Ellie is before. Cute, sure. But pretty? Why has she never seen that until now? She reaches up with her hand and brushes Ellie’s auburn hair out of her face so she can see her lovely face a little better.

Man, she’s really turning into a real heart breaker, Riley thinks to herself. For one moment, the idea of kissing Ellie bounces across the back of her mind. She blinks in surprise, and the thought is gone as quick as it had arrived.

Where the hell did that come from, she wonders.

Ellie’s full little mouth is so close, her green eyes shimmer with adoration, her freckled cheeks are baby-soft. She lies there, almost cheek to cheek with Riley, and the older girl feels that rogue thought return again. It doesn’t go away as easily this time, but she still manages to push it out of her mind.

These last few months have been increasingly confusing for Riley. She has started looking at Ellie in ways she never did before. She never let Ellie in her bed, not until the heat went out on Christmas Eve night a few months ago, and they shared the top bunk out of necessity. Winters are cold in Boston. It was the first time Riley had let Ellie crawl into bed with her. But now, somehow, Ellie seems to find her way up here at least once a week or so, and Riley always lets her slip under the covers with her. She knows she shouldn’t. She knows it will only encourage Ellie, who has been harboring a big crush on her older friend for a while now. Riley knows she shouldn’t let Ellie lay here with her like this, but she does it anyway.

At first, she allowed it just because it was so fucking cold. But now she looks forward to it, even if she won’t admit it to herself, because she loves how good it feels to have the smaller girl cuddled together with her. It was comforting at first. But now it’s becoming something… more.

Riley rolls over onto her back, her hand on Ellie’s shoulder, bringing the girl over with her, until she feels that little auburn head snuggle into the hollow between her shoulder and her neck. Ellie is thrilled, grinning wildly as she settles in. She and Riley have never snuggled like this before. She drapes herself along the length of Riley’s body, stretching, sighing, and trembling, just a little. Riley feels herself becoming aroused. Part of her wants to enjoy this. Part of her brain reminds her that she’s not like that, like Ellie, like this thing that she’s doing now. Her nipples are hard and her stomach is nervous in a way that feels oh-so-good. She looks down at Ellie, who looks up from her cozy place above Riley’s breasts and smiles sweetly, adorably. Riley feels the need to kiss her rising again, becoming harder to resist as Ellie’s full lips part, begin to form words, words Riley can only barely hear. For one dizzying moment, Ellie’s lips are her entire world.

“Mmmmm… This is nice,” Ellie says in a small, cute voice.

“Yeah,” Riley agrees, seeing the hard, prominent points of her nipples jutting up from the front of her thin shirt, feeling the moist heat gathering further down her body. She’s turned on and doesn’t want to think about why she’s feeling this way. “Yeah. It is.”

Ellie snuggles in, very close, her eyes closed, resting her head just below Riley’s chin. Riley hopes Ellie can’t sense how horny she’s become. Ellie murmurs against Riley’s throat, her breath tickling the sensitive skin there. “I wish we could stay like this forever.”

“Me too,” Riley whispers, willing her body not to move, not to squirm, not to enjoy the way Ellie feels, draped against her, half naked and more than half willing, she’s sure of it. All she has to do is ask, and Ellie would make out with her in a heartbeat. She takes a deep, calming breath, which Ellie mistakes for drowsiness, and stuffs these feelings down as deeply as she can. “Me too, boo.”

“Can I sleep up here tonight too?” Ellie asks.

Riley knows it’s a bad idea. It’s taking all her will power not to take this farther than it’s already gone. She knows that if she lets Ellie up here again, after dark, with the lights out, with no way for her own eyes to see what’s happening, with their bodies hidden under the sheets, cloaked by the night…

“Sure,” she hears herself say. Why did she say that? Why doesn’t she take the words back, while there’s still time?

“All night?”

“All night, boo.”

She doesn’t take the words back.

“Cool. Thanks, Riley.”

 

 **[0811]**  
Morning assembly is done. All the boys and girls of T1 are present and accounted for. Nobody went missing during the night. Where the hell would they even go?

The girls in Riley’s fifth floor group fall out of the rigid lines of their tightly regimented ranks, drifting apart to find friends in the crowd and gather into their own little clusters. Riley is joined by two of her friends from Dorm T2. The smaller, chaotic groups begin to make their way to the chow hall. Riley stands her ground, waiting. Her friend, Linh Tuan, is ready to go.

“C’mon, Riley. Chow’s gonna get cold.” Linh yawns, stuffing her hands into her dark blue cadet slacks. She blinks sleepily. The short Asian girl is even less of a morning person than her dark skinned friend.

“You’re wasting your breath, Linh,” Cheryl Jackson says, pulling her long, red hair back into a ponytail. Cherry is on serving duty today, part of the trade skill program she takes in place of advanced classes.

Cherry isn’t the smartest girl in school, but she was smart enough to learn a trade right from the start rather than just buck the system non-stop for three years. Riley is only now realizing that Cherry had this silly game figured out from the beginning. The redhead isn’t as dumb as she seems, Riley glumly admits to herself.

“Riley isn’t going anywhere without her little buddy,” the busty redhead continues, nudging Riley’s upper arm with her elbow. It elicits a curt laugh from Linh. Riley smirks, but continues to scan the crowded assembly area, looking for one particular face.

On cue, Ellie emerges from the shuffling crowd of sophomore girls, shoving her way through their ranks, breaking out of the crowd into the open plaza, launching herself into a sprint as soon as she spies her friend.

“Riley!” she calls from halfway across the parade ground. “Wait up!”

“No running, Williams!” one of the instructors barks.

“Sir, yes sir! Sorry, sir!” Ellie responds, slowing to a speed that might be considered walking if you were inclined to be very, very generous.

“She’s like a little redheaded homing missile,” Cherry giggles. “She can’t go around the other people. Nope. She has to plow straight through them.”

“No kidding,” Linh chuckles. “That little shit worships you, Riley.”

Riley laughs, slides her hands into the pockets of her slacks, and tries to play it cool.

“Little?” Riley teases. “She’s taller than you, Linh.”

“I’m Vietnamese, bitch,” Linh laughs, gesturing at her body with her small hands. “This is the only size we come in.”

Riley laughs. She and Linh have been friends for almost two years now, ever since they got stuck together on motor pool duty one hot, shitty summer. It seems like a lifetime ago. “Ah, she’s okay, Linh. She’s tough, for a freshman. And it’s nice having my own live-in slave.”

“Wish I had one,” Linh grouses. “Chloe is the worst roommate ever.”

“Can’t be worse than Trina,” Cherry sighs. “That girl hasn’t changed her sheets all year.”

“Gross,” says Riley, remembering her own roommate, the one she had before Ellie. Elizabeth Rooker. Smelliest girl to ever walk the earth. She graduated right before Ellie arrived. One rumor is that she’s a prostitute down in the slums. Another rumor claims that she’s shacked up with a junior officer, conning him into getting her extra ration cards. No one knows for sure. Once a student leaves the school, it’s almost as though they never existed. Riley knows this will happen to her too. Despite all the work she put into building her fearsome reputation, in a few months, she’ll drop off the face of the earth as far as this school is concerned.

Ellie arrives, bringing her wildly pumping legs to a stop just before she barrels into the cluster of girls. She is breathing hard, having come all the way from the freshman assembly point at a full sprint.

“Hi, Riley,” she pants, grinning and full of life. “Hey, Cherry. Hey, Linh.”

“Hi, Ellie,” Cherry says brightly. She’s always sort of liked Ellie in her own way.

“Hey, Ellie,” Linh smiles. “Riley was just offering to sell you to me for three packs of cigarettes.”

Ellie snorts and crosses her arms defiantly, puffing her small chest out with pride. “You wish! But everyone knows that Riley would never trade me for less than half a carton of smokes. Right, Riley?”

“Damn right, girl,” Riley chuckles, letting Ellie stand very close to her. “I sell you and I’ll have to do my own laundry and clip my own toenails again.”

“There you go,” smirks Ellie.

“Eew!” Linh laughs, making a face. “Damn, Riley. I feel sorry for her now. More than I usually do, I mean.”

The cluster of girls laughs. The assembly area is already half as crowded as it was a few minutes ago. Cherry heads off at a trot, not wanting to be late for her shift in the chow hall. She has a special treat for Riley, although the birthday girl doesn’t know it yet.

“Come on, you two,” Riley says, taking charge as she always does, leading her crew confidently, their fearless leader. “Food’s gonna get cold if you girls don’t stop flapping your lips.”

 

 **[1031]**  
It’s hard to stay awake. The day is getting warm. Dark storm clouds are gathering out over the ocean, driving the humidity up. The classroom is stuffy. Riley’s stomach is full. Cherry had slipped an extra scoop of scrambled eggs and a second slice of salted ham on her chow tray as she passed her on the serving line. The redhead had discretely slipped a second drink chit on the edge of her tray too. Riley had enjoyed a glass of cold milk and a nice cup of orange juice too. All this unexpected digestion is making her drowsy. The boring lecture on the history of terrorism isn’t helping either. How can you make such a topic boring? And why do the instructors insist that all revolutionaries are terrorists. Have there never been any good uprisings? Are the army and the government always right? Riley knows it’s propaganda to discredit the Fireflies.

There’s a knock on the door. The instructor stops speaking. The students turn to look. It’s an army sergeant with a clipboard. They all know what this means.

The soldier reads from his list.

“Abel, Riley… and Bennet, Clay.”

The instructor nods at Riley and Clay.

“Good luck, Riley,” Linh, who sits behind Riley and one row over, whispers.

The instructor speaks quickly. He knows the sergeant will report him if he doesn’t maintain strict control over his class at all times. This is a cushy job and he won’t risk losing it, not for even the smallest infraction, not while he’s being observed.

“No talking, Cadet Tuan.”

“Sir, sorry sir,” Linh responds crisply as her friend gathers up her books and follows Clay and the sergeant out the door and towards the bus and the short ride across the zone to the FEDRA building and the moment that every troublemaking student dreads. Linh’s time is coming too. June 11th, to be precise. Less than a month away. Linh said the words to Riley as much for her friend’s benefit as for her own.

 

 **[1118]**  
Riley hates waiting. Waiting is running out the clock of your own life just to suit somebody else’s schedule. She shifts about uneasily. She’s usually much cooler than this, but her nerves are on edge today. Today is the day she has been dreading. Today she has to choose. Today she has to declare.

The large lobby of the FEDRA Boston Quarantine Zone administration building is clean and air-conditioned. More than half a dozen senior students mill around, waiting to be summoned, making small talk, trying to be cool, enjoying the novelty of cold air in summertime. Like Riley, their birthdays are this week. They have to declare too.

Two army soldiers in immaculate black uniforms wait outside in the light of the warming day, standing guard, flanking the doors. Their armor is pristine, their boots glossy, their weapons oiled and darkly gleaming. They verify the identity of everyone who passes through those large smoked-glass doors etched with the FEDRA eagle, intimidating everyone else who passes by. A pair of flat black Bradley IFVs, sporting large autocannon from their boxy turrets, flank the clean, open plaza beyond the front doors, guarding the pathway from the street to the building, further intimidating passersby. The bus that brought them here from the school waits patiently at the curb.

This looming building rules Boston and no one is welcome here but the rulers.

The lone staffer ensconced behind the elaborate reception desk works on her computer, answers the odd phone call, directs the few visitors permitted through the doors to a stairwell or an elevator or a doorway. She mostly ignores the students milling about, though her eyes are ever watchful. Fear? Disdain? Distrust? Something else? Riley doesn’t know what she sees in that woman’s eyes. She tries not to look in the woman’s direction.

A boy she doesn’t know ambles over to her near the floor-to-ceiling tinted window, where she stands alone, looking out at the parking lot to the side of the building, at the nice row of privately owned cars, safe behind the high fence. Riley isn’t a FEDRA employee. She will never know the privilege of owning her own car. Civilians and soldiers alike are denied that luxury. Resources are simply too scarce, or so the official policy claims. Riley knows the truth. It’s just another form of control, another way to separate the few from the many. Only the higher-ranked FEDRA employees don’t have to ride the bus or walk like commoners. The neat row of beautiful cars beyond the glass and the fence makes Riley burn. Hate? Shame? Envy? She can’t say. She knows, but she can’t say.

The boy speaks to her, keeping his voice low. They are in the belly of the beast, listening ears are everywhere. “Aren’t you that girl who stole a truck from the motor pool last fall?”

“It was actually the surplus vehicle storage lot. And they never pinned that on me,” Riley replies quietly, but with just the right amount of smugness.

“Drove it all the way across Area One and left it parked in the alley behind that empty bar,” he says.

“MacKenna’s Pub,” Riley offers, her voice barely above a whisper, a cocky smile on her lips, knowing that details are important if the story is going to keep circulating after she’s gone. “Took them all day to find it back there. By the time they did, smugglers had stripped it just about down to the frame.”

The boy grins but keeps his voice low. “How did you get the keys?”

Riley crosses her arms to look tough and gazes out the windows at the neat line of cars gleaming under the rays of the sun. Her voice is soft, breezy, cocky. “Hummers don’t have keys. Just a big knob you turn to start the motor.”

He chuckles and regards her like she is the coolest person in the room. Riley feels herself warm under his gaze. He reminds her of Montego, her boyfriend who graduated last semester. He’s down in the slums now, new muscle working as a guard for one of the dog fighting rings… or so she’s heard. He forgot all about her the day he left the prep school. He promised her he wouldn’t. She believed him. He swore he loved her. She believed him. That’s why she let him take her virginity on the roof of the dormitory, near the same spot where her friend Bonnie used to keep that silly little mayflower hidden in its small clay pot. All gone now. The flower. Bonnie. Montego. One working for small time gangsters now. One dead outside the wall, the victim of a clicker and a negligent soldier too busy flirting with another soldier to do his job. One thrown from the roof and smashed all over the sidewalk below by a bored underclassman, a sophomore with nothing better to do than break things. That’s how it is now. There was a time when people planned for the future, when people her age wondered about the future, when old people worried about the future and how precious little of it was surely left to them. The future is long gone now. Maybe nobody will ever worry or dream or wait breathlessly for the future again. Maybe the word itself will be forgotten one day. Good riddance. Fuck the future.

For one moment, Riley wants to cry. She hides it well and the boy never suspects.

“Nice job,” he smiles.

“Thanks,” she replies, as though the praise is no more than she’s due. “What’s your name?”

“Mike,” he says, his head cocked in a way that’s just a little challenging. She likes this boy. He adds in his best, smooth, charming tones, “Dorm T-3.”

“T-1,” Riley replies, letting her eyes quickly run up and down him, taking him in and not being shy about it. He’s fit, like every student here. Tall. Already shaving, judging from the two small cuts on his face. White skin. Brown hair. Gray eyes. Just a hint of a smirk on his young lips. In time, his features will become leaner, harder, more masculine. But for now there’s still more than a hint of youthful boyishness in his face. His eyes are soft, as are his lips.

Kissable, she thinks to herself. This boy is very kissable. I like that.

Dorm T-3 is only two buildings away from her own. Maybe one night soon, she can arrange to meet him. Find out just how kissable that mouth of his is. Montego lit a fire in her that hasn’t gone out, even after he did. Riley knows ditching Ellie for the night would be the tricky part. She wonders if Ellie would be jealous. She knows her young friend would tell her that it was no big deal. But all the same, Riley wonders.

“Yeah, I know,” Mike says. “You’re Riley Abel.”

He says it with a cool shrug. She likes that her reputation has carried to his cute ears. It took three years to build that reputation. A lot of work. A lot of risks. A lot of punishment. Pretty soon, it won’t mean shit. She’ll be outside the fence of the academy, out in the city, starting from scratch. Her reputation in the school will fade away and it will be as though she was never here, never dragged inside that fence on the night her parents died, the night they took her away from her broken and bleeding home, from her soft bed, her old toys she never played with anymore but still couldn’t bear to part with, the books her mom read to her every night, the living room radio they sat in front of after dinner, listening to old music because nobody made new music anymore, listening to her beloved dad and his terrible dad jokes, sitting on his lap and knowing for certain that he was the biggest, strongest, funniest man in the world, back when he was still himself, still whole, still loving, not cut open and bleeding and howling and thrashing and dying on the kitchen floor from the wounds his only daughter had ripped open in his wrists, ragged bleeding spraying gashes made with her mom’s good pair of scissors, the scissors Riley was never supposed to touch. Her mom had made her promise. She had, because she loved her mom, and she wanted to be a good girl for her. When her father finally lay quiet and still in the crimson pool in front of the kitchen sink, she could hear her mom in the living room, gurgling quietly as the life ebbed from her opened body. Riley looked at the scissors in her hand and cried. She cried there inside the cabinet until the FEDRA men found her, summoned by the neighbors, the nice polite neighbors who hid inside their apartments, cowered behind locked doors, hushed their children and told them not to make a sound, to wait and do nothing and hope the danger would pass them by. The Culvers. The Durantes. The Harts. The Lapointes. The Ritters. Nice neighbors, her mother had told her. Good people. But none of them came to help. Nobody ever helped. It wasn’t that kind of world anymore. Maybe it never was. Probably never was. Those old stories about the good people who took care of each other, the stories her dad used to tell her to teach her that the world had been a better place and would be a good place again? Those stories were lies.

Again, for the briefest instance, Riley wants to cry. Again, she hides it well and the boy never suspects.

With the clear and smooth tone of an elevator chime and the opening of two highly polished metal doors, a FEDRA man appears in the lobby. All eyes are drawn to him. He emerges from the glowing interior of the elevator onto the polished tile floor like a man from another time, a traveler from a land where civilization still stands, and the earth is yoked and tamed, the reins held firm in the hands of men like him. A silk tie. Perfectly pressed collars. A tailored suit, sharply creased. Glossy shoes. A silver clipboard in his hand. Riley has never seen a real Federal Disaster Relief Agency representative up close. She has watched their silver SUVs rolling down the streets, all pedestrians and street traffic forced to move aside and wait in quiet, unmoving submission while their betters passed. She has seen their silver passenger vans parked by the curb of the academy gate, guarded closely by uniformed men with guns. Once, when she was seven or eight, she saw a silver FEDRA helicopter in the sky, coming back from a meeting with the leadership of a distant QZ, or so her father had told her. But she has never seen a FEDRA agent in the flesh before. Despite her best efforts, she feels slightly in awe of the man. If there are any truly powerful people left in this shit sack of a world, here stands one of them before her, a god of the old world, a man who still wields whatever power remains of the United States of America, if anything of that mythical land still remains here on earth with poor, bedraggled mortals like herself. She stands in mute wonderment of him, like all of the teenagers in the lobby, her mouth half open and no words on her lips, and she hates him for the power he holds over them and hates herself even more for the power she surrenders to him so easily in this moment. One of the cars on the other side of the window belongs to him. He owns his own car. She can’t quite grasp such a luxury. He indicates that they should gather on the large FEDRA logo inlaid into the tile floor near the elevators and the students begin to drift towards him almost without conscious thought. They obey this immaculate god descended from heaven. How could they not?

His skin is darker than her own, smooth, flawless, clean. As they gather before him, she can faintly smell his cologne. It smells masculine and powerful to her. Opulent. Heady. Intoxicating. She feels the fire Montego lit inside her loins start to grow unexpectedly. This man is powerful, handsome. She hates him for filling her head with thoughts like the ones that are flickering across the back of her mind now. FEDRA Bastard. No refuge, not even inside her own head.

“I am Tycen Wright,” he says in a baritone voice worthy of a god. “I will be handling your declarations today. If there are any of you who wish to forgo enlistment and transfer to civilian status at the end of this semester, please follow Mrs. Tabor over there.”

Wright indicates a short, fat woman at the far end of the lobby, standing quietly near the lit sign reading “Emergency Exit Only” in large red letters. Riley did not see her come in but she is certain the woman was not there a minute ago. She stands half in shadow, a little frumpy and not so nicely dressed as the FEDRA man. Friendly enough, although she offers a clearly lesser alternative to the bright, gleaming future Tycen has in store for them. Riley can’t help but note what a long walk it would be from their place in front of the elevators to the distant emergency exit. A long, lonely walk across a wide, empty space. She remembers Melody, the girl who declined military status just two semesters before. Riley marvels now at how much courage it must have taken Melody to leave the safety of the cluster of nervous students and their brave FEDRA protector and walk across that endless expanse towards the shadows and the fat woman waiting under the threatening red sign.

Mind games, Riley thinks to herself. They’re fucking with us, trying to control us. Even when they tell us that we’re free to choose, they’re shoving us where they want us to go.

Mrs. Tabor waves pleasantly. She reminds Riley of the fat woman who took her from her home the night she lost her family.

A moment passes.

None of the students walk over to Mrs. Tabor. Riley tries to remain calm. This is it. Time to choose sides. Fight for FEDRA and hope for table scraps or submit to their rule and hope to be forgotten by them. She hates both choices. She reminds herself that she came here with a plan. She has to stick to the plan. The plan is all she has. They won’t let her have anything else and she only has that because they don’t know she carries it inside her. She holds on to the plan to hold on to herself. FEDRA can’t tell her who she is.

“Well, Mrs. Tabor,” Tycen says, his deep voice reverberating across the tractless, polished desert of choices surrendered, “looks like no takers today.”

“Oh darn,” she says in a high, nasal, almost motherly voice. Her smile is broad, her words familiar and rehearsed, her tone welcoming, hiding the fact that she knows these children are merely cattle, like her. “Maybe next time, I guess.”

“Maybe so,” Tycen says and the woman turns to leave.

Mrs. Tabor disappears through the door and down a dark hallway, swallowed up by the gloom that would have swallowed any who had been foolish enough to follow her. Carefully chosen theatrics to reassure the students that they had made the right choice by staying with Tycen, staying with the military, staying in the light.

Peer pressure, Riley realizes. Fucking peer pressure. Nobody wants to the first one to leave the group, take that long walk all alone. Makes you more likely to stay with the default choice of the army if you’re on the fence.

I’m on to you motherfuckers.

 

 **[1146]**  
Riley had never experienced an elevator ride before. It was a surreal experience. Step in. The door closes. The door opens again and you’re somewhere else, like a magic trick. Ellie would have loved it.

A different FEDRA stooge is leading her down the hallway of the thirtieth floor. Riley glances out the window. She’s never seen the world from this height before. The people below are barely dots. The army trucks look like little toys. The world seems smaller to her than it did before. This place has changed her a little and she hates it that much more.

The woman’s shiny black high heels click-clack on the polished white tiled floor. She is dressed in a nice gray skirt and cream-colored blouse. Like Tycen earlier, this woman belongs to an older, better world. Riley feels like a homely street urchin next to this woman and her perfectly bunned hair and flawlessly applied makeup. Her perfume is subtle and feminine. All Riley has is deodorant, and men’s deodorant at that, because that’s what they were issued this month. She feels ugly and ungainly and insignificant up here with all these high-ranking army officers and FEDRA staffers.

“Morning, Ray,” the woman says as they pass an army colonel with a coffee mug in his hand.

“Morning, Claire,” he replies, his eyes only barely registering Riley. “Another troublemaker ready to change her ways at the eleventh hour?”

“Now now, Ray” the woman chides sweetly. “We believe in second chances around here. Remember?”

The colonel snorts a cutting laugh and disappears into a room filled with secretaries and copy machines. The old world never died in this building. Paperwork is still its lifeblood. The walls are painted, the floors clean, there are no water stains on the ceiling. Riley marvels at it all. The whole world must have been like this once. Clean and working. She knows that Ellie would give almost anything to see this place.

“Here we are,” the woman says cheerily. “Just wait here and they’ll see you soon. Okay?”

They are outside an office at the end of a hall. The plaque on the wooden door is brass and etched with perfectly aligned letters.

          Asst. Director Parr  
          Induction Services

The woman places her small hand with the nails painted a lovely, dusky pink lightly on Riley’s shoulder. She is trying to be friendly and reassuring. She knows that the students don’t have lice, but the thought flickers across her mind and her face unbidden. Riley notices. She knows the nice woman in the nice clothes finds her a little repellant.

“Don’t be nervous, honey. You made some mistakes but we’re very forgiving about that sort of thing. Just answer his questions honestly and you’ll do fine.”

With that, the woman is gone and Riley is alone in the hall with the closed door and its nice brass plaque. She tugs a little at the blue collar of her cadet uniform and it feels tighter than it normally does.

She’s going to wash her hands, Riley muses. She won’t do anything else until she’s made sure she washed me off her hands. Bitch. My uniform is clean.

It’s the last clean one she has. Ellie had better do the damn laundry tonight or there will be an ass kicking in Room 529 after lights out. The thought makes Riley smile, just for a moment. She feels normal again but the feeling passes. This place is too strange for her.

She thinks about spitting on the plastic fern between the door and the big window at the end of the hall but thinks better of it and takes in a view of Boston instead. From up here, she can see well beyond the containment wall at the ruins of the world long gone beyond. She tries to remember as many of the details she can. Ellie will want her to tell this story several times over the next few days. The thought makes Riley smile. She can’t wait to get back to her young friend. Ellie makes sense to her. This place, with the cool air streaming from vents, and the smell of coffee wafting everywhere, and the churning, monotonous drone of copy machines spitting out paperwork that no one outside these walls will ever care about… this place makes no sense to her.

 

 **[1204]**  
Her dad had gone to bed when he came home from the ration center. He’d spent hours down there, just waiting to get a spot in line, hoping to get some food and basic amenities for his family before they ran out, like they often did. The day had been so cold. He was soaked through to the bone with the damp and the chill when he finally came home. She’d kissed him and hadn’t noticed the shaving cut on his cheek seemed a little worse than it had this morning. He’d smiled, gone through the door to the little bedroom he shared with her mom, and closed the door behind him. She would never see him again. Whatever it was that came barreling out of that room late that night, when her mom had gone to check on him, it wasn’t her father. Her father would never have hurt her mother like that, tearing her open, tearing her apart. Her father would have never chased his beloved daughter through the apartment, into the kitchen, under the sink, reaching for her, both of them shrieking, her mother’s best scissors in her small hands, the scissors she was never supposed to touch, not for her paper dolls, not for the Christmas cards she cut from that pretty red construction paper her daddy had found for her, not for any reason. But her mother was dying, screaming and bleeding in the living room. She wouldn’t mind now. She wouldn’t get mad at her daughter for grabbing the scissors from pocket of the old apron that hung inside the cabinet door, under the sink, where all the precious cleaning chemicals were kept, the ones that were so hard to come by anymore. The ones scattered and spilling all over the floor, rolling to a stop after she had kicked them out of the way to make room for her to hide. Those scissors had been so big in her little hands. Her father was howling, furious, clawing at the cringing, terrified little girl trying to hide down there, bawling as he reached for her small ankle. His hands were pulling, tugging, dragging her out of her hiding spot, out to him, out to a certain death. His wrists were veiny, bulging. The scissors were razor sharp, just like her mother insisted they should be. They weren’t toys either. Just like her mother said.

“Riley Abel?”

Riley snaps back to the present. Her parents are dead. She blinks them away. She is an orphan. No past. No future. Only an idiot worried about either of those things. She turns to look behind her, at the clean, neat hallway, at the face of the man fishing keys out of his pocket, half a creamy chicken spread sandwich sticking out of his mouth as he speaks around it.

“Sorry, cadet. Running a little late. Big meeting this morning. You know how it is.”

She knows no such thing.

The man standing at the door to the office wants to talk to her about her future. He is an idiot. He doesn’t know what she knows. There is no future. This is all for show, just like the copy machines spitting out forms in the small, open office two door down and around the corner.

 

 **[1219]**  
Riley tries her best to sit still and not shift about in the leather seat. It is an old chair, of course, but one carefully maintained. A few discrete patches have been applied to it where two decades of use have worn it thin, but it is nevertheless far and away the nicest chair she has ever sat in. She still can’t believe that this man isn’t making her stand at attention the whole time. But he isn’t in the military. People don’t stand at attention here.

The man, Joshua Parr, punches some numbers into the speakerphone on his desk. Her folder with all the precious paperwork lies open on his desk. There are photos of her paper clipped to the inside of the flap. One taken the night she had arrived, wide-eyed and scared and wearing a plastic smock. Another taken for her first temporary ID card, needed during those first few months she was here as a worker but not a student, too young for classes, old enough for chores. And another photo for each of the three years she had been a student here and a new ID card had been issued to her as she moved up in grade levels. She was scared in that first photo, bewildered and lost and on the verge of tears. She hates how she looks in that picture. The others, she looks harder in those photos, tougher, meaner, the kind of girl who wouldn’t cry for anybody or anything. Each year that passed, she looked more and more badass. The photos tell the tale. Riley is tough now.

She remembers the old Polaroid camera hidden in her room and the photo of her and Ellie stuck to the wall near their bunk beds. The angle of the photo is strange. Riley was holding the camera up and pointing it at them, a selfie in a world that had forgotten the word. Ellie was behind her, resting her small chin on Riley’s shoulder, her little white hand coming up from beneath Riley’s arm to lightly hug her older friend. They are both smiling in the picture. So happy to be together in that picture. Best friends forever in that picture.

Riley feels her eyes begin to sting and focuses on all the issued forms, the warnings and demerits, in the folder. Fighting, vandalism, missing curfew, missing assembly, tardiness, truancy, disrespect, disobedience, disorderly conduct, you name it and Riley has been reprimanded for it at least once. She has been close to expulsion more than a few times here. But she has always stayed ahead of it. Always stayed out of trouble long enough for the heat to die down. Always got back in trouble again when the coast was clear. But now it has finally caught up with her. Now she is going to be made to beg for forgiveness.

When Tycen had paired the students off for processing, he’d made Riley stand alone, several feet away from the group, ostracized, while he took the other students oaths of enlistment and welcomed them to the delayed military service program of the United States Army. Only Riley wasn’t allowed to take the oath. Only Riley wasn’t cut loose from class early as a reward for choosing to serve. Only Riley stood alone as the lobby emptied out.

Once he had her alone, Tycen Wright had told her that her record contained too many red flags. She was only marginally fit for service, and even then, she’d probably be on probation for the first two years, and that was only if the higher ups agreed to grant her a waiver. Otherwise, she was getting kicked downstairs with the civilians and the vermin. Riley didn’t flinch, didn’t waver as he reprimanded her for her poor academic and disciplinary record at the FEDRA Boston Military Preparatory School. He even spoke of her early arrival before she was old enough to enroll as though it had been a good thing for her, as though she had squandered a chance to see how things worked before she had to join the ranks of the cadets, as though she was a stupid girl who had wasted a golden opportunity instead of being a terrified child who had just lost her entire family. She held on to her plan in the corners of her mind and let his scathing rebukes wash over her. She knew who she was. If FEDRA didn’t like it, FEDRA could fuck off.

Tycen took her up to floor thirty and handed her off to the woman in the nice blouse. He was done with her. He said he hoped she would get her act together, but doubted she would make the most of a second chance if they were nice enough to give her one. Either way, she wasn’t his problem any more.

“Superintendent Nemeth’s office, Carol speaking.” The voice is clear as a bell. Riley didn’t know that telephones anywhere in this city still had such perfectly clear signals. But it comes to her quickly: FEDRA reserves the best lines for themselves, naturally.

“Carol, this is Josh Parr down at the tower,” Parr says, idly rifling though Riley’s paperwork. “I’ve got a student here that needs a waiver. Could you put Bill on, please? Tell him I’m pressed for time.”

“Right away, Director Parr,” the woman on the other end of the line says.

The speaker clicks faintly as the call was put on hold. Seconds later, the familiar voice of Superintendent Nemeth comes through.

“Director Parr, it’s Bill Nemeth. How are you today, sir?”

Riley blinks. She has never heard Nemeth call anybody sir. The deferential tone in his voice sounds foreign, alien. The next time he speaks to the assembly of students, she will have a hard time reconciling the stern, gruff man on the parade ground platform with the ready to please voice on this phone.

“Doing fine, Bill,” Parr says, holding up one of the forms for closer study. “I’m sitting here with one miss Abel, Riley Payton. One of your more untamed youths, according to her record.”

“Yes, sir. I know her. She’s quite the little rebel.” Nemeth tries hard make it sound like he is part of the inner circle, on equal footing with Parr. Riley can hear it clearly. He is working hard to be one of the boys. She will never look at Nemeth the same way again.

Parr seems not to notice. Perhaps he doesn’t care. “She’s volunteered for military service today, Bill. But she needs a waiver.”

“You’re kidding me, sir,” Nemeth almost laughs.

“Wouldn’t joke about it, Bill.” Parr’s voice is calm. His eyes dart quickly to Riley and then back to the form in front of him. “She’s seen the light and figures it’s better to be a solider and get three hots and a cot instead of standing in a ration line all day and hoping for the best.”

“Will wonders never cease,” the voice on the phone chuckles.

“So what do you think, Bill? Should we give her a waiver? Overlook her long, long list of sins? Let her join up and do some good with her life?”

“I can’t say I have any objections, sir,” Nemeth says. “As luck would have it, Colonel Turner is here. As direct monitor of the work details, he dealt with her more out on the grounds than I did in the classrooms. Heh heh. Should I put him on?”

“Please do, Bill,” Parr chuckles, putting the form down and picking up another.

Riley feels her cheeks burn. Nemeth never sets foot in the classrooms. Fuck, he hardly ever leaves his office. He leaves everything he can to his subordinates. Turner on the other hand… Turner loves disciplining the students. Especially the female students.

A few seconds of phone shuffling passes before a new voice sounds from the speakerphone.

“Director Parr, this is Hank Turner. How are you, sir?”

“I’m well, Colonel. Superintendent Nemeth tells me that you have some personal dealings with Senior Cadet Riley P. Abel. I’m considering issuing her a waiver for military service. But I’m always open to feedback by those that know the students best. What are your thoughts on Cadet Abel, Hank?”

“Oh, I know that one,” Turner chuckles.

Riley’s stomach curdles. She remembers that day in his office, the day after Ellie had attacked that boy in the cafeteria, the sophomore who had thrown Bonnie’s little flower off the roof of the dorm, Bonnie was dead by that time, killed by a clicker while outside the wall while on a work detail. Ellie had adopted that flower. It represented everything good in the world to her young eyes. That boy chanced across it and destroyed it, more out of boredom than malice, and Ellie sent him to the infirmary with three stitches in his scalp. Ellie was a brand-new cadet, a transfer from the orphanages and the foster home system, with a record of misbehaving a mile long. Word was that someone had pulled a bunch of strings to even get a problem child like her into the prep school in the first place. The higher ups threw her in the box to let her bake outside in the sun while they decided whether or not to expel her. Riley had waited for her the following evening, when Ellie was finally set free. She helped Ellie get cleaned up and cashed in a favor with Cherry, who was working in the chow hall, to get Ellie something to eat. Poor Ellie was a mess. She wasn’t fitting in, she had no friends, she was just too weird and too afraid to reach out to anyone, always angry, always watching from the sidelines, never letting her guard down, keeping every one at arm’s length, not trusting anyone but Riley. After talking to the crying girl for a while on the loading dock behind the chow hall, Riley knew that she had to do something before Ellie found herself out on her ass and wandering the streets at the much too young age of thirteen. Riley had cashed in lots of favors with some of the staff to secure her own room in the dorm. She knew that getting a closely-watched freshman like Ellie to be reassigned up there on the senior floor with her wouldn’t be easy. It was something that her usual approach of scrounging up smokes and liquor wouldn’t be able to accomplish. Desperate, she had approached Colonel Turner, hoping that he would meet her halfway on this. Ellie was a good kid. She just needed a little help. Turner had agreed to move the girl into Riley’s room. But there was a price attached.

“I won’t lie to you, Director Parr,” Turner is saying on the phone. “Abel’s got a stubborn streak a mile wide and she hasn’t always been the most respectful of authority…”

The space under his deck had been cramped. He’d scribbled away at logs, filled out paperwork, even spoke briefly on the phone near the start, while he could still talk normally, before his breathing became faster, uneven, before he began to groan.

“But she’s shown in the past that she can follow the rules when it’s in her best interest. And once she’s in the army, being fed every day and facing a firing squad if she gets up to her old tricks would make behaving something that’s in her best interest.”

His cock had filled her mouth, probing for the back of her throat, seeking illicit release with a fifteen year old in exchange for saving a thirteen year old from a terrible fate: a life down on the streets doing the same sort of work that Riley had done under the desk that day.

“So you’d recommend the waiver then?” Parr asks, scribbling something on a yellow notepad with a half-sharpened pencil.

Riley has never told Ellie. She never will. Ellie would blame herself. She is too young, she doesn’t know how things work. Riley paid the price in her place, did the work for her, convinced Turner that she would do a better job sucking him off than an inexperienced little virgin like Ellie would. Riley had never been much of a team player, but she was loyal to her friends. Fiercely loyal. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for her friends. She knew what she had done and what she could do. She knows that if Turner doesn’t make this waiver happen for her, she will take Ellie’s switchblade from its hiding place behind the outlet cover in their little room and pay a visit to Turner. She will leave the damn blade buried all the way to the hilt in his cancerous heart. The man on the phone is about to make a much larger decision than he can know. Riley grinds her teeth and waits.

“Sure. But I would recommend putting her on probation for a while too, and watching her close,” Turner says, and Riley relaxes visibly. “So, yeah, I’ll add my vote for approval alongside Superintendent Nemeth’s. She’s tough. With the right training and a little discipline? Yeah. She’s worth taking a chance on, I think.”

“Okay. Thank you, Hank. And give Bill my thanks too. I appreciate you both taking the time for this.”

“Thank you, sir,” Turner says as Parr hangs up the phone.

He looks at Riley and smiles. It isn’t warm, but it isn’t entirely dismissive either. It’s business. Parr is a professional.

“Okay, Cadet Riley. Let’s get this paperwork sorted and I’ll give you the Oath of Enlistment myself.”

“Thank you, sir,” Riley says and does her best to sit up straight. She has done it. The first part of her plan is underway. The clock is running now.

 

 **[1302]**  
Riley steps off the bus, her stomach growling. The other students on the trip got a nice free lunch in the impressive FEDRA food court on floor twelve. But Riley spent her lunch in Parr’s office. Well, part of it. Most of it was spent waiting outside his door. The paperwork is done. She said the words. She is promised to the army now. September 1, 2033. That’s her date of delayed enlistment. She has that long to put the rest of her plan into action. Less than three months. Time is running out. A future she doesn’t believe in is rushing towards her like a runaway truck. It makes her a little sick and she wants to think about something else for a while.

“Can’t believe you didn’t opt out and become a civvie,” The boy she spoke to in the lobby says, drifting over towards her as they gather at the gate checkpoint of the school.

Mike, she suddenly remembers. That’s his name. Mike.

“I’m not stupid, Mike,” Riley says, forcing herself to laugh. “I may not be crazy about the army, but who wants to be a helpless civilian?”

“True,” he says, holding up his ID card for the armored soldier controlling the checkpoint. “LeBlanc, Michael S. Dormitory T-3. Cadet ID Number SS-7-1140 / 796-6, sir. Returning from enlisting, sir.”

“Good man,” the soldier says and waves him through. The young man waits on the other side of the checkpoint for her to join him. She likes his confidence.

Riley takes out her own little vinyl wallet and opens it to reveal her card. She nods at the guard as he looks at it. She speaks the words by rote. “Abel, Riley P. Dormitory T-1. Cadet ID Number SS-3-0319 / 967-2, sir. Returning from enlisting, sir.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me, Abel,” the guard laughs through the filtering confinement of his gas mask.

 

 **[1319]**  
Mike is a pretty good kisser. It’s too bad the floor of the unused classroom is so damn hard and uncomfortable.

 

 **[1408]**  
“You made out with him?” Senior cadet and perpetual kitchen duty worker Cheryl Lynn Jackson asks, smearing a little mustard on the ham sandwich she is making for Riley. Cherry has another whole semester before she must declare.

“Yep. And before you even ask, Cherry, it was absolutely worth the trouble of sneaking in and out of that second story window.”

“Cool,” Cherry says, handing the sandwich to Riley. Cherry enjoys sex almost as much as she likes working in the kitchen. “Here you go.”

“Thanks, girl.” Riley eats quickly. She doesn’t want to get Cherry in trouble for handing out food at unscheduled times.

“So…” Cherry says, adjusting her thick red curls under her tight cap trying vainly to keep her hair out of the food. She lets the word hang in the air while maintaining eye contact with Riley.

Riley sighs and rolls her eyes dramatically.

”No, Cherry. I didn’t fuck him.” She snorts and then smiles slyly. “I did let him touch me in many places though. And yes, I returned the favor. Hmm. Shoulda washed my hands before eating, I guess.”

Cherry giggles and takes a seat next to Riley on the low shelf by the kitchen’s little-used back door. No one comes back here usually. They have time to talk for a little while. Probably.

“Not that,” Cherry laughs. “But I AM going to need details later. But right now, I’m curious if you’re ready to be a civilian in a few weeks?”

“Not going to be a civvie, Cherry. Gonna be a soldier.”

Cheryl Jackson is rarely caught with nothing to say. Riley enjoys the silence as she takes a big bite out of what remains of her sandwich.

 

 **[1422]**  
“… support and defend FEDRA and the Security Acts of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” Riley mumbles to herself, recalling the oath she swore before Assistant Director Parr earlier in the day.

The breeze is cool up here on the roof of Dorm T-1. She leans on the brick edge of the roof and watches the male students below doing jumping jacks on the grassy field behind the dorms while the female students run around the track. Ellie’s P.E. class is in the morning; she isn’t down there. Riley tries to remember what Ellie has for last period. History, she thinks. But she isn’t sure. She sighs deeply and wishes it were three o’clock already. She’s ready for class to be done. She’s ready to see her young friend again.

 

 **[1457]**  
Riley sits alone in the dormitory’s dayroom, bored. No one to talk too, no one to play pool with. Nothing to do but sit alone with her thoughts.

How am I going to explain this to Ellie? I remember how they dogged Montego when he refused to enlist. They tossed his room every day, searching for contraband, looking for any excuse to throw him out early and deny him the diploma he had earned. They’re not going to do that to me, the fuckers.

I can’t do that to Ellie. They’ll find her mother’s knife. They’ll take her comics and her books. They’ll make her miserable trying to get to me.

I have to lay low, pretend to be good, stop sneaking out, actually behave myself for once. I have to stay off their radar until I can find a way to contact the fireflies. But I can’t tell Ellie that. She’ll want to join too. Hell, she’ll probably decide to join the military now that I have. She’ll follow me anywhere. She’s crushing on me and that isn’t going away.

God, she’s really got a thing for me. It’s not a cute little crush on an upper classman like I thought it was. She really… _likes_ me. Fuck. What am I supposed to do with that?

Riley sighs, a deep, dejected sound. She gets up and leaves the dayroom. She walks the floor, then goes down to the lobby and walks that floor too. She does not want to be alone just now. She needs Ellie. To talk to. To help her make sense of things. To help ease this roiling mess of thoughts sloshing around inside her head. Riley knows she needs a fucking hug and she hates that she does.

 

 **[1511]**  
When Ellie comes racing into their shared room, Riley is waiting near the window, her back to the door, hands stuffed in her pockets, watching the world go by outside. Cool, aloof, sexy. Ellie has no idea how much Riley has missed her these last few hours.

The younger girl sprints across the room and wraps Riley up in a hug from behind.

“Riley!” Ellie shouts happily.

“You didn’t ask permission to enter my room,” Riley teases, looking back over her shoulder at the short girl.

“Ugh! Why do you suck so much?” Ellie groans into Riley’s back with mock drama.

“Careful, boo,” Riley teases. “After the way you just spoke to me, I’m gonna have to make you sing the National Anthem of Room 529.”

“I’ll be good,” Ellie sighs dramatically, defeated by her hatred of that song. Ten verses, each one about how great Riley is. It’s not a song so much as it is a form of punishment inflicted on her for Riley’s amusement.

Riley turns around, holds Ellie at arm’s length. Her voice is warmer than normal. “I know you will.”

Ellie smiles.

“Now close the damn door, boo,” Riley says, her eyes narrowing mischievously. “I don’t want to inflict your terrible singing on the rest of the floor.

Ellie stops smiling.

 

 **[1514]**  
“ _Best in the world! In the zone! In the school!_ ” Ellie marches in place, swinging her arms in time with the tempo of the song.

Riley nods appreciatively, clapping, keeping time for her friend. Short though she may be, and a terrible dancer on top of that, Ellie has a very nice singing voice.

“ _And that’s why Riley is so coooooooooollllll_ ” Ellie belts it out, her feet stomping to a stop, her arms coming up from her sides in triumph, trying hard to keep her voice clear and steady as she closes out the last verse of the song. The big finish, as Riley likes to call it.

“Good girl,” Riley golf claps politely from her seat at the edge of Ellie’s mattress as the younger girl bows deeply, cartoonishly in the center of the small room.

“I hate you so much,” Ellie groans, crossing the floor to sit beside her friend. She smiles with each step, even though she tries her best to look pouty. Blushing has made her face a deep red. It’s been ages since Riley actually made her sing the stupid song. She wonders what on earth she did to deserve this punishment.

“Want me to make you sing it again, bitch?” Riley giggles, wrapping her arm around Ellie as they sit together.

“Please don’t,” Ellie laughs, her small body rocking with it. She leans close and rests her head against Riley’s, melting into the wonderful hug.

“Okay then. Behave yourself,” Riley coos. “Now… do you want to hear all about the inside of the fancy FEDRA tower or not?”

“Ooh!” Ellie sits up excitedly, her pretty face beaming and full of life. “Was it all high tech and stuff?”

“Fuck yes, it was,” Riley says, leaning back on her hands, drinking in Ellie’s admiration, enjoying how the younger girl is hanging on her every word.

“Were there any robots?” Ellie asks, clasping her hands together in her lap, hoping against hope.

Riley rolls her eyes and tries to decide where to start.

 

 **[1704]**  
Riley holds court at her usual picnic bench near the back of the chow hall. It is one of the smaller benches, just big enough for four, but with five squeezed around it like always. Tino, Linh, Jamaad, and Ellie. Her royal court. Nobody fucks with them. Not back here, not outside, not anywhere. She hopes that Ellie will still have a place here after she and Linh are gone at the end of this semester. She’s carved Ellie’s name into the table to help make that a reality. She knows the girl can be loner if she isn’t pulled along and made to socialize. Ellie has trust issues. The young girl has a big heart, but she’s had to carefully guard it her whole life. No family. No real friends. No one has ever really loved her back on the few occasions when she’s dared to love someone. Not until Riley came along.

Jamaad is teasing the freshman girl, like he always does.

“Gimme your pear, shortie. I’ll arm wrestle you for it.”

“Get your own pear, you giant goober. This is mine.” Ellie looks at her almost empty plate, but her voice is playfully defiant.

“Yeah. But you’re not eating it. C’mon, you little shit. Gimme.” He reaches for it. She pulls the lunch tray away. “You wish! It’s my pear and I’m not going to eat it. I hate pears. You know what? I’m going to throw it away just to spite you.”

“You think I won’t eat it out of the trash?”

“I dunno, Jamaad. Let’s find out,” Ellie grins, standing up, taking her otherwise empty tray with her, and heading for the trash. Jamaad follows close behind.

“I’mma eat that pear, shortie. Don’t even think I’m joking about it.”

Linh and Tino watch them go. Riley snorts in amusement.

“He’s the biggest senior in my dorm and she doesn’t take any shit from him,” Tino laughs, doodling an elaborate rattlesnake on the wooden top of the picnic table. He looks up at Riley to emphasize his next words. “You know he’s gonna kick her little ass once you’re not around to stop him.”

“Counting on you to take care of that, Cadet Reyes,” Riley snarks, her finger tracing the edges of a deep firefly logo she cut into this table a year ago, the day she returned Ellie’s stolen Walkman to her.

“Oh yeah?” Tino says, one eyebrow cocked. “And why should I do that?”

Riley looks at him in a way she rarely does: with complete and total sincerity. “Because we’re friends, Tino.”

Tino ponders this for a moment. Linh never takes her eyes off him.

“Sure thing, Riley. I’ll look after her.” He nods. So does Riley.

Riley smiles, sees how Linh is looking at Agostino. She hopes one day he’ll open his eyes and see how much Linh likes him. It’s almost too late. Linh leaves at the end of this semester too.

Ellie returns and plops down next to Riley, a glass of fruit punch in her hand. Jamaad sits down across the table, on the far side of Tino, a pear in his hand. He wipes it clean as Ellie pushes the cold drink towards Riley.

“Here you go, Riley,” Ellie says, beaming. “I saved up a drink chit just for today. Drink up, birthday girl.”

Riley’s cool demeanor slips, replaced by a genuinely warm smile. “Aww. You sweet little shit. Thanks.”

“That’s from all of us, Riley,” Tino laughs, leaning in and winking at Ellie.

“Fuck you, Tino. Get your own birthday present for her,” Ellie giggles. She likes him. He’s nice to her. But she’ll never feel comfortable around him without Riley around.

“Should we sing the birthday song?” Linh teases.

Riley snorts into her fruit punch and kicks her under the table.

 

 **[1723]**  
Riley sits on the broken down old sofa of the upper classman dayroom. Ellie is snuggled close, like always, fueling the persistent rumors that she is Riley’s love slave. The other senior girls are used to the sight of the freshman in their space now. But they still enjoy spreading the rumors. Riley doesn’t give a shit. Neither does Ellie. Ellie wishes the rumors were true.

Riley smiles cryptically and pulls Ellie just a little closer. The girl looks up at her adoringly, but Riley’s thoughts are far away. The older girl smiles for reasons only she knows.

Ellie. Ellie has always brought out the best in her. The young girl is so interested in the past, so hopeful for the future. Riley pretends to be too. She has pretended for so hard and so long that she can almost believe that the world might hold out some hope for her. Ellie has been such a gift. She’s given Riley a future again. Not a future together, sadly, but that’s just how life is. She is going to miss Ellie.

Linh unexpectedly appears and settles down on the armrest of the couch next to Riley. Cherry appears over her shoulder. Other girls from this dorm and the others begin to fill the room. Ellie sits up, grinning, her eyes sparkling. She has known this moment was coming. Riley whispers that the young redhead is getting a beating when this is over. Ellie giggles.

Cherry starts singing first, with all the other girls quickly joining in. Ellie’s clear soprano, so close to Riley’s ears, soars above all of them. Riley shakes her head and tries to get through it without beating anyone.

“ _Happy birthday to you! … Happy birthday to you! …_ ”

 

 **[1751]**  
The dayroom is still overflowing with girls when Cherry announces that it’s ten minutes until curfew. Cherry has always been the sensible one in this group. There have been many ‘dim bulb’ jokes made at her expense these last three years, but Cherry has always been smarter than they know. What she lacks in raw IQ, she makes up for with her ability to plan, make schedules, and stick to them until she reaches her goals. Only now that they’re older, do the other girls finally appreciate the usefulness of those skills.

“Come on, Linh!” Cherry says, tugging lightly on her friend’s arm. “Caught out after curfew is a three point offense. You’ve got two points left.”

“Oh shit! Good point!” Linh says, taking a last pull from one of the contraband beer cans being passed around the room. She hugs Riley and discretely tucks a folded paper note down the front of the birthday girl’s shirt. She whispers to Riley as Cherry pulls her away. “Love you, girl.”

“You too, Linh,” Riley smiles, feeling the sharp edges of the note against the soft skin of her breasts.

The visiting girls file out quickly. They have only a few minutes to get to their own dorms. Only Riley, Ellie, and a few others have the courage to sneak out after curfew.

Riley settles back, content to relax in the dayroom until it closes at nine o’clock. Lights out will follow at ten.

Ellie leans in close. “Be back in a little while. Okay?”

“Sure,” Riley replies and watches Ellie scamper out.

Someone turns on the radio and the lyrics to an old song fill the room.

“ _I saw your eyes… and it made me smile… And for a little while… I was falling in love…_ ”

Riley doesn’t know the song, but it’s a simple enough melody. She hums along to it and lets her cares slip away from her for a while.

 

 **[2043]**  
Only a few girls are left in the dayroom now. Most have retired to their rooms. A few others are helping to hide the crushed flat cans of beer in various places around the building. Ellie hasn’t returned yet. Riley doesn’t worry. It’s not like Ellie to be gone so long, but there is no safer place to be in the entire quarantine zone than this school.

Seizing the moment of privacy, Riley takes the note out of her shirt and unfolds it.

          Mop room.  
          Over the sink.

That’s it. Two sentences. Five words. Riley is intrigued. She gets up and strolls out of the dayroom. This party is over anyway. On the far end of the floor, around the corner next to Room 529, the room she shares with Ellie, Riley sneaks into the janitor’s closet, across from the locked electrical room. She gingerly steps up onto the old sink and reaches up for the loose ceiling tile above it, her favorite hiding spot for contraband, as Linh well knows. It moves, but something is on top of it, hidden up there in the darkness. She tips it very carefully, listens to whatever is up there as it goes rolling along down tilted surface towards the dislodged edge. It tumbles over the lip and lands in Riley’s outstretched hand. Small. Cool. Glass. She pulls it down and reads the bottle’s old, yellowing label in the light of the single, naked light bulb.

“Tullamore Dew,” Riley whispers, a smile spreading across her face. “50ml Airline Bottle. Blended Irish Whiskey. 80 proof (40% alcohol).”

Her giggle is soft and lively in the small closet.

“Nice, Linh. Very nice.”

The small bottle tucked inside the waistband of her panties, Riley steps back into the hall. She surprises Ellie, who has also just stepped out into the hallway from inside their small dorm room.

“Riley?” Ellie’s voice is high, guilty. Riley can’t miss the cues. Her young friend is up to something.

“What are you doing, Ellie?” Riley smirks. She doesn’t know what sort of secret Ellie is hiding, but she knows that Ellie folds under any pressure from her older friend.

“Ummm…” Ellie looks around the hallway as though she is looking for any excuse. She finds none. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit. What were you doing in the room?”

“Ummm…”

Riley pushes past her and enters Room 529, ‘Dead End Row’ as the girls up here know it, the last room on this floor, tucked around a corner all by itself. It’s a close to privacy as any girl can have in this place and it’s practically Riley’s secret lair by this point.

Ellie is hot on her heels as they enter their room together. The small space smells delicious. There is a tiny aluminum foil bundle of brownies waiting on the top shelf of the bookcase, still warm and toasty under a fluffy dishtowel.

“Holy shit,” Riley gasps. “Do I smell brownies?”

“Yes, you do,” Ellie beams, practically glued to her friends side as they cross the room together. “Happy birthday, Riley.”

Riley unwraps the bundle, inhales the rich, chocolate aroma. “Oh man. How the fuck did you score brownies, boo?”

“Traded Cherry some stuff for them,” Ellie grins, almost blushing at how pleased Riley is with her. “It wasn’t easy.”

“Traded her what?” Riley asks, her eyes falling on the unexpectedly empty space at the bottom of the bookshelf. “Wait! You traded your Batman comics? You gave _your comics_ away? Holy fuck! Cherry traded _comics_ for brownies??”

“Not exactly,” Ellie says and proceeds to describe a ridiculously complicated series of trades with a half dozen other students across all three dorms that somehow turned comic books into things that could be traded for other things that could be traded for makeup and perfume, the only things Cherry would trade for a precious bundle of four brownies made from ingredients locked away in the private stores of the senior officers dining facility. It had taken Ellie weeks to get all the trades in place and then to do them all quickly enough that Riley wouldn’t get word of it.

“Proud of me?” the young redhead asks, trying to suppress a smile that threatens to consume her entire face.

Her answer is a warm hug.

 

 **[2147]**  
There had been four brownies. Now there were none. Two and a half for Riley. One and a half for Ellie. They were worth every Batman comic Ellie had ever owned.

The girls lie together on the floor of their small room making small talk, about old friends, new friends, how the world was, how it might be one day. It will be lights out soon. The window is open and the night air is cool on their bare skin. Ellie has always been a nudist when the door is locked. After months of fighting it, tonight Riley has given in and joined Ellie in the habit. It somehow feels right, lying here together, wearing nothing but their panties. She wishes she had taken the plunge sooner. She suspects that her near nudity is the reason Ellie won a game of Monopoly tonight. It rarely happens.

I was off my game tonight. Distracted by having my tits out, Riley thinks to herself. I would’ve thought Ellie would have been more distracted by them than I was, but the little shit beat me. I can’t believe it.

Beside her, Ellie finishes her theory on how space aliens have probably been visiting us all along and we can’t seen them because they have cloaking devices, like that alien in that movie that killed all those body builders in that jungle. He wouldn’t have got so many of them if Chuck Norris had been there, of course.

A long silence follows. What can you really say after something like that? Ellie smiles and sighs contentedly, taking pleasure in having once again wowed Riley into silence with her insightful theories about the mysteries of the universe.

“Y’know… This is actually kind of nice,” Riley admits, stretching just a bit. “Being naked before bedtime really takes the edge off the day.”

“I told you. Hell, I’ve been telling you since I moved in,” Ellie snorts, gloating just a little. “No better way to unwind and beat the heat.”

“It’s not hot so much as it is muggy, boo,” Riley giggles.

“Details, Riley,” Ellie snickers. “Now don’t be a butt. You’re harshing my brownie buzz.”

Riley giggles, suddenly remembering the bottle of booze Linh gave her. “Oh! Hey! Speaking of buzzing…”

She gets up and crosses the room to retrieve the little bottle hiding beneath her pillow. She is aware of Ellie’s eyes on her naked body every step of the way. She doesn’t mind. She is happy to let Ellie look. Especially after the brownies. The girl has literally earned some brownie points. On a whim, Riley tells her this and Ellie laughs wildly, wonderfully. The girl loves a good pun.

On her way back, Riley notes the empty laundry basket. The sight of it brings her to a halt mid-stride. She looks at the basket, at Ellie, at the basket, at Ellie…

“You did the fucking _laundry?_ ” Utterly astonished. Best birthday ever.

“Yep,” says Ellie proudly from her spot on the floor, her fingers laced across her flat stomach, her head titled back, drinking in Riley’s gorgeous form. “While you were in the dayroom. Snuck across the grounds to the chow hall too. Cherry has cleanup and prep duty tonight. She’s there all alone, so she smuggled the brownies out to me between guard patrols.”

“I’m impressed, boo.”

Ellie blushes, shrugs. “Just trying to make this the best birthday I can for you.”

“Doing the damned laundry would have accomplished that all by itself, boo,” Riley laughs. She sits down beside Ellie, who rises up to join her. Riley notes idly that Ellie has filled out a bit since she first moved in here. Her hips are rounder, her waist smaller. Even her breasts are starting to swell, ripe and lovely. Riley giggles as she unscrews the bottle cap. If she’s going to think thoughts like these, she’s going to need some liquor in her. “You know, I think this is the first time you’ve done the laundry without being pinned to the floor first, boo.”

“Yep. Ahhhhhh…. You want to hug me right now. Don’t you? I understand.” Ellie oozes an adorable smugness. Her shit-eating grin is very cute. It makes her older friend giggle. Ellie giggles in return and asks the obvious question. “Where’d you get the booze, boss?”

“Linh. No idea where she got it.”

Ellie shrugs, chuckling. “With Linh, there’s no telling. She’s a bad girl.”

“Badder than me?” Riley asks, one eyebrow cocked, her twinkling eyes promising a brutal beating if she doesn’t get the answer she expects.

“Nobody’s badder than you, Riley,” the redhead purrs, declining the bottle as it is offered to her, trying not to stare at her older friend’s smooth brown thighs, her full sumptuous breasts, her taut firm stomach, her full inviting lips. She fails to not notice any of these things, but she tries, damn it. She tries.

“Damn right. Don’t you forget it,” Riley says, bringing the bottle to her lips. “After I’m gone, I’m counting on you to keep my reputation going. Sure you don’t want some?”

“Nah. I’m good. I’m full of brownies. I’ve got a nice sugar rush going.”

Riley giggles and downs the small bottle in just a few long pulls. Ellie watches the brown skin of her throat working as she pulls the whiskey into her body. Her eyes drift down to Riley’s full, bare breasts while her older friend’s eyes are closed, savoring the booze that’s already warming her from the inside. A different kind of warmth begins to suffuse Ellie’s small body.

“Ffffuuuuuck,” Riley moans, the sound sending a thrill through Ellie’s stomach. “This stuff is… _Amazing_.”

Ellie looks at the empty bottle in Riley’s small brown hand.

“Product of Ireland,” the young redhead reads.

“Yep,” Riley says, more of an exhalation than an actual word. Her eyes stay closed. The room can’t spin if she can’t see it.

“Ireland,” Ellie repeats softly, the word deliciously exotic in her small mouth.

This little bottle might as well have traveled here from another planet. No one born in Boston today will ever see Ireland. The world is full of mysterious places again, dark, distant lands, crumbling cities, ancient monuments, bridges, airports, overgrown resorts, amusement parks gone feral, vast fields of grass with pockets of sand and eighteen small strange little holes, home to grazing beasts now, decaying stadiums, cracked asphalt seas, faded but eternal plastic shapes, mute testimony to a once great people all but gone now from this world, spinning in space, quiet, verdant, uncharted, unknown, unknowable, no longer bounded by the old, crumbling maps in the geography classroom across the concrete plaza from this cozy old dormitory, ringed with electric lights trying to push the darkness back for just a little longer. Just a little longer. Before the lights go out at last and night returns again, as it had in the uncountable epochs before the electric lights appeared briefly and stabbed and flickered futilely at the indefatigable night before disappearing again, gone forever probably, before darkness again blankets the world.

The notion fills Ellie with wonder and fear. It would fill Riley with a bittersweet melancholy, if the alcohol didn’t crowd such feelings out. Riley has always been a happy drunk.

Ellie permits herself one more lingering look at the beautiful, bare form so tantalizingly close to her own, before moving her eyes back to Riley’s upturned face, as though her older friend is seeking some greater truth from the ceiling light, filtered through the closed lids of her enchanting dark eyes. Ellie smiles, taking communion with her best and only friend and their shared sacramental brownies. The young girl’s voice is friendly, soft, reverent. Riley doesn’t notice. The whiskey is imparting holy truths to her.

”Yep.” Ellie smiles. It is good.

‘Taps’ sounds from the hallway speakers. Ten o’clock has arrived. Ellie jumps up and dashes across the room on bare feet to get to the light switch before the pre-recorded bugle music reaches the end of the short song. They are plunged into darkness and Riley gasps theatrically.

“Oh no! I’ve gone blind! That evil bitch Linh gave me bad booze!”

“See why I stopped at the brownies?” Ellie giggles. “I never trusted her. I’m so glad you didn’t sell me to her for a pack of smokes.”

“Get over here and be my seeing eye dog, damn it!” Riley cackles, the vintage whiskey already going straight to her head.

“On my way, boss!” Ellie bubbles happily, obediently, trying to find her way to her naked friend in the darkness, her mind racing with forbidden thoughts.

They lie there in the darkness, side by side, each feeling the warmth of the other’s naked body, and talk quietly for a while longer. Ellie has many theories to share and Riley is drunk enough to listen to all of them.

 

 **[2305]**  
Riley lays there in the gloom, unable to sleep, her thoughts on a future that isn’t as clear as she thought it would be after today. Her lack of focus can’t be blamed entirely on the whiskey and the beer. She can hear the steady rhythm of the clock, ticking away the seconds of precious freedom she has left, the moments she still has with Ellie, the few remaining scraps of carefree innocence she can already feel slipping away from her.

She wants to curse, she wants to cry, she wants to put her fist through the ceiling above her. She closes her eyes instead, and tries to think about nothing, tries to will herself to sleep.

I should have brushed my fucking teeth too, she thinks, the notion coming to her out of the blue, just one more problem to weigh her down tonight. This is how you get cavities. Ellie is _always_ going on about her fear of getting cavities.

Ellie…

Girl, what am I going to do with you?

In the darkness, in the still, steady silence, she becomes aware of Ellie breathing. The girl lies in the bunk below her. She’s supposed to be asleep. She must think Riley is, so long has the older girl been lying up here, unmoving. Ellie’s breathing is shallow, quick, ragged. She sighs softly, moans so faintly that at first Riley isn’t sure that she heard it. The younger girl groans through clamped-shut lips, trying to make no noise, failing at that, badly, and settling for making a little noise as possible.

Holy shit, Riley realizes. Ellie’s playing with herself!

Riley lays there, perfectly still, listening to her younger friend move beneath her sheet, trying to stay still, stay quiet, and not managing to accomplish either of those things. Ellie groans, not able to keep her lips pressed together this time. The noise slips out, heat and need saturating every note of the private, lustful refrain the young girl is making. The carnal sound reaches Riley, spreading through her body, seeding her with Ellie’s need as it passes through her. Riley half closes her eyes, draws in a slow, deep breath. Her body begins to respond to the muffled sounds of Ellie’s rising passion.

While they lay together earlier and Ellie imparted the secrets of the universe, Riley’s thoughts had returned again and again to Montego, to Mike, and to… someone else. The alcohol wouldn’t let her escape the swirling of barrage of erotic imagery. Montego on the rooftop… Mike in the empty classroom…

Ellie…

…

Right here on the floor of their room.

Fuck, I’m so horny, Riley thinks, shocked by the intrusion of her young friend into her fantasies. What’s gotten into me?

She listens, sure she can feel the heat rising through the air between them, making her own mattress warm with her young friend’s body heat.

God, I’m going crazy, she tells herself. Ellie… Fuck… What am I gonna do with you, girl?

Ellie groans, louder this time, still quiet, but loud enough in the silence of the dorm room.

“oh god…” the young girl gasps, trying to be quiet, needing to be quiet. “oh… _oh fuck_ …”

This is a mistake, Riley tells herself just before her mouth forms the words that she knows she shouldn’t speak.

“Ellie? You awake?”

Stillness. Calm. No sound. Utter, absolute silence.

“Ellie?” Riley asks again, casually, like nothing’s going on out of the ordinary. “You awake, boo?”

Nothing. A void of empty, motionless blackness yawning beneath her top bunk bed. Ellie isn’t down here, it seems to be saying. Ellie was never down here. Now go to sleep, Riley, before somebody in this room dies of incredibly naked shame. Go. To. Sleep. _Please_.

Riley smiles to herself. Ellie has probably never been this quiet in her life.

The older girl slides her sheet aside, the cool night air in the room refreshingly chilly on her bare torso. Nimble as a cat, she slips over the side and climbs down to the floor.

As Riley stands there looking at her, Ellie doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t give any sign of being anything other than a perfectly normal, non-masturbating, fourteen year old girl, laying flat on her back, both hands under the sheets for absolutely no reason that anyone should wonder about, snoozing, snug and warm, as innocently as a young, innocent girl like her can be, which is super duper innocent, as anyone can plainly see.

Riley shakes her head, smiles. She wants to hug the fuck out of Ellie right now.

The girl plays dead in a way that impresses her older friend. Lying in the cool sliver of light coming in from the streetlights outside the window, she remains perfectly still, like a little redheaded statue. It’s quite a performance.

Riley crouches near the head of Ellie’s bunk and whispers into the ear of the unmoving, silent young girl lying in the bottom bunk.

“Ellie…” Riley whispers.

Nothing.

“Ellie, don’t pretend you’re asleep. I know what you were doing down here, you little pervert.”

“…riley?…” The voice is so soft, so sleepy, so mumbly, that Riley can’t help but smile. Any other night but tonight, and Ellie would have completely fooled her with it. She mutters as though coming up from the most perfectly restful slumber ever. “… what’s wrong? …”

“Don’t play dumb, Ellie.”

“… huh? …” So soft, so sleepy, so completely, utterly, innocent.

“I know what you were doing,” Riley says, poking Ellie lightly in the shoulder.

“Ummm…” A normal volume, all pretense abandoned, but still clinging to the hope that she wasn’t busted.

“You,” teases Riley gleefully, leaning in close, prodding Ellie’s bare shoulder with one finger, “were playing with yourself.”

A long moment. The clock ticks. Riley grins in the darkness. She can practically feel the embarrassment radiating from Ellie’s body.

“Admit it, girl,” Riley whispers, confident and sexy, like the cool upper classman she is. “Cop to it now. Don’t make me sniff your fingers.”

Ellie sighs forlornly, so incredibly, inescapably busted.

“Ummm…” is all Ellie can manage.

“Say it. You were playing with yourself, boo.”

“I was playing with myself,” Ellie groans in defeat. “Please don’t hit me.”

“Ellie…” Riley giggles, drunk, knowing she shouldn’t say the words she’s about to speak.

“It’s not a crime,” Ellie babbles. “I get horny. Don’t beat me, or tease me, or anything, okay? I don’t have a stack of studly boyfriends lined up to service me like some people in this room. I just… you know… got horny. I’m sorry. I _tried_ to be quiet about it, I swear I did. Please don’t tease about this, Riley. _Please?_ ”

“It’s fine. I’m not going to tease you, you little pervert,” Riley hears herself speak the words, as though she doesn’t know the problems they are going to cause tomorrow. She knows she shouldn’t have said anything. She knows that she should have just laid in bed and listened, and not got involved, not said anything. But she did. And she is. And she’s pretty drunk, so that helps too. “Scoot over.”

“wh-what?” Ellie’s voice is very small again, scared, shocked, horny.

“Scoot over, I said. I’m getting in bed with you tonight. There’s a storm coming. It’s getting chilly.”

Riley reaches for the edge of the sheet, starts to lift it up. Ellie’s hand darts up, holds it in place. Even in the darkness, Riley can see how wide and round Ellie’s eyes are.

“But… um… I’m… well…”Ellie begins, her voice nervous and stammering. It falls to a whisper as she continues. “I’m not wearing any _underwear_ , Riley. So… um… Can you give me a second… or something?”

In the darkness, backlit by the wedge of light coming in through the window, Ellie watches Riley stand up, slide her panties down, step out of the discarded underwear, and place her hands on her ripe hips with the kind of cool confidence Ellie knows she will never feel.

It’s dark enough that Ellie cannot see that Riley’s hands are trembling, just a little bit.

“There. Now we’re both naked. Is that better?” Riley snarks, cocky and sexy and cool and everything that Ellie wishes she will be one day, when she’s Riley’s age. “Now scoot the hell over, Ellie.”

Ellie does, very quickly. She holds up the edge of the thin sheet as Riley slips under the covers with her. Riley has never slept down here with her. Sometimes she lets Ellie sleep in the top bunk with her, but she never comes down here. And she’s never shared a bed with Ellie while being so totally fucking naked like this. Ellie can barely contain herself.

“Not that I’m complaining, Riley…” Ellie begins, her voice shaking, but trying to sound cool, like Riley.

“ _Miss_ Riley,” her older friend corrects commandingly, dominantly, sexily.

“Miss Riley,” Ellie says quickly, thrilled to be bossed around, as always. “But why are you down here in the slums? You never come down from the penthouse.”

Riley smiles at Ellie’s use of her nicknames for their respective bunks. It’s important to keep the new students in their place. She slips one arm beneath Ellie’s back, holding her close in the snug confines of the little bed. Ellie is glad to let Riley pull her in, cozy and warm and delighted by the feel of Riley’s naked body pressed alongside her own. They lay there on their backs, pressed hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, barely fitting in the bed, the younger girl squirming, just a little, filled with a joy that she can’t entirely understand. She knows it feels good to be with Riley like this. She thinks she knows why, but she’s afraid to give it too much thought, afraid to get her hopes up, afraid that this isn’t going where she hopes it will.

“Because I’m pretty sure I’m drunk,” Riley admits in a moment of spectacular honesty. “And I’m horny, Ellie. I mean, like, _crazy horny_. You know?”

“I do,” Ellie says, giggling, resting her head in the hollow of Riley’s shoulder. “I’m horny too. So…. um… What should we do about it, Miss Riley?”

Riley giggles at the adorable loving submissiveness in Ellie’s voice. She’s so eager to please. She’d make a great love slave, if only Riley were into girls instead of boys.

Riley stretches herself on her back, side by side with Ellie, who lies beside her, close to the wall. Riley opens her legs, finds that there isn’t quite enough room in the bunk, and doesn’t want her leg hanging off the side of the bed, so she slips one leg up and over Ellie’s, draping it across her young friend’s thigh, Ellie’s thigh fits snugly into the hollow of the back of Riley’s knee. Ellie shivers and sighs at the touch.

“Oh, man.” Ellie’s voice is faint and nervous and filled with an unspoken need she struggles to fully embrace. She knows that she likes other girls, even if she’s never admitted it openly but she was certain Riley was only into boys. But now…

“Hope you don’t mind, boo,” Riley giggles. “I needed the room.”

“Oh God, no,” Ellie babbles in a voice made breathy with lust. “Fuck. You can lay on top of me if you want to, Riley. Um, I mean, _Miss Riley_.”

“Good girl,” Riley purrs, turning her head to look into her young friend’s adoring eyes. Ellie knows her place. Riley has taught her well.

Riley reaches down, pulls the sheet up over them, hiding their naked forms away from the tiny slice of streetlight seeping in from the window, keeping their bodies safely out of view from each other.

“Oh man, I can’t believe we’re really gonna do this,” Ellie jabbers, nervous and horny. “I mean, I know we’re drunk and everything, but… wow! You know? I mean, just, wow! You’re not gonna be mad about this tomorrow… are you?”

Riley reaches over, finds Ellie’s hands working themselves into knots on her belly, and pries one of them loose, taking the little hand in hers, firmly. She slides it across Ellie’s stomach, the smooth flesh quivering and nervous, down through the ticklish triangle of Ellie’s pubic hair, and stops, hovering over the warm, wet heat of Ellie’s tender, naked sex. Ellie shivers in anticipation.

“…oh fuck…” Ellie squeaks. Her hips rise up, just a little, her small, aching mound craving the touch of Riley’s hand.

“Ellie…” Riley began. “Are you going to play with this sweet little thing of yours or not?”

“I am,” Ellie said, grinning, her hand shaking in her friend’s firm grip, the heat from her little pussy rising up to warm their entwined fingers, hovering just out of reach.

Riley releases her friend’s small hand. Ellie’s eager fingers quickly find their place and go to work. Riley pats Ellie’s lower belly proudly. “Then get to it, girl.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ellie squeaks, scared, thrilled, and more turned on than she has ever been before.

Riley brings her left hand back to join her right, waiting on her own nervous stomach. She sends them down, lower, to her ready, swollen sex. She needs this. She can’t remember the last time she needed it this badly.

Beside her, Ellie groans, her small body tenses, trembles, warm, wet heat already building inside her. Riley can feel the warmth radiating out from her smaller friend, suffusing into her own skin, as they lay pressed together on the small mattress.

“… oh god…” Ellie whispers in the darkness. “… this feels _so good_ …”

“Yeah,” Riley sighs, stretching out just a bit more. “Yeah, it does.”

She holds herself open with her left hand, the fingers of her right inching down, teasing her tingling inner lips, becoming slick with her own wetness. She gasps, a sharp intake of breath that makes her shoulders jerk against Ellie’s. Her friend presses herself closer, slides her slender hips against those of her older, curvier friend in a way that feels so good, so right, so amazing.

“God, I’m so fucking wet,” Riley whispers.

“Me too,” Ellie whispers. She groans, her fingers dancing lightly over the hood of her swelling clitoris. “… fuuuuuck….”

Riley slips a finger inside, not too deep, just enough to provide the sensation of being penetrated. She shudders, remembering Montego, her ex-boyfriend. He loved fingering her, but he always went too deep, too hard, hammering her fast instead of going slow. She wanted to be explored, appreciated, not conquered. Montego is long gone and she finally accepts that she’s probably never going to see him again. Tonight she’s going to get there the way she always wanted to with him, if only he had been a little more patient. Tonight she’s going to take this trip slowly, with Ellie.

Beside her, Ellie whimpers, begins to writhe.

“…fuck…. ooohhhh…. Riley…” she groans.

“Miss Riley, “ Riley purrs, reminding her of the official title she demanded Ellie use when Ellie was still a new girl at this school.

“Oohhh… Miss Riley…” Ellie giggles, groans, shudders. “Shit… Oh! Mmmm… Are you… you know… getting close…?”

“No,” Riley whispers, feeling good, but not that good. Not yet. “But I’m getting there.”

“Hurry,” Ellie groans. “I’m almost there.”

“Go ahead and come if you need to,” Riley giggles, slipping a second finger inside, going only as deep as the first knuckle, stretching the tight ring of her opening just a little more, just a little closer to what she needs, what she craves. Her other hand pulls gently on her labia, stretching it just a bit. It feels so good. Riley groans, long and deep.

“…no…” Ellie protests weakly, her rising need obvious in her strained voice. “…we… should come…together…”

Ellie’s body tenses, her back arching. She is very close now.

“…like… those people… in your smutty books…” Ellie grunts. “…they… always… come… at the same time… right? …”

“Those are just books,” Riley whispers, her body responding wonderfully to the tremors rippling out from Ellie’s squirming body pressed so close against hers, warm, soft flesh slipping and sliding against the length of her body, so wonderful. She feels Ellie struggling with her rising passion, their legs overlapping, becoming damp and slick with sweat. “It doesn’t work like that in real life, Ellie. You don’t have to wait for me, boo.”

“…but…” Ellie groans, her breath catching, “I…. want to… mmmm… oooohhh… I… want us… to come… to…gether…”

“And since when have you been reading my romance novels?”

“…the last… few months…” Ellie sighs. “… they’re… not bad…”

“You’ve been reading the stories? Or just the dirty parts.”

“…um…”

“Just the dirty parts. I knew it.”

Ellie giggles, groans. “…you… know me…”

“Yeah. I know my girl.”

Ellie wants to laugh, but all she can do is groan, long and deep. It vibrates through her body and into Riley’s. It feels so good to hear her make noise like this. Riley wants to listen to her all night.

The older girl picks up the pace, working herself into a lather. She presses the meaty pad of flesh beneath the base of her thumb against her yearning clit. She hisses. “Fffffuck… This feels so good, Ellie.”

“please…. miss riley…” Ellie groans, shuddering, agonizingly close and trying to hold it off for as long as she can. “…hurry…”

A pair of fingers working inside her skillfully, with familiar, well-practiced precision, Riley begins to grind the heel of her hand against her hard clit. She gasps loudly, a long, deep groan set loose from somewhere in the core of herself. She shudders against Ellie.

“Oh, God… Ellie…” the older girl moans.

“… hurry, riley…” the young girl keens.

Ellie nuzzles in close to her older friend, tucking in tight and low. Riley’s elbow brushes against one of her small breasts. Riley can feel the small, hard nipple pressed against her skin. Ellie moans, shifting her body, trying to bring more of herself into contact with Riley. She wishes Riley would play with her tits, tries to pretend that this is what she’s feeling as she grinds her small breast against Riley’s inner arm.

“… hurry…”

Riley knows that people only come together in books and stuff, not in real life. But she spurs herself to greater efforts, working her pussy faster, rubbing the plump lips, spreading her abundant wetness everywhere. Even with the sheet muffling the noise, she can hear the soft, wet sounds she is making. The noise turns both of them on.

Ellie groans, her words mixing in with the moist sounds of Riley’s hands on her slippery pussy. “…fuck… that’s so hot…”

“Make some noise, girl,” Riley giggles, her words faint, barely exhaled. She can smell the whiskey faintly lingering on her own breath. “Don’t be shy.”

“… i… don’t know… how…you’re… doing that…” Ellie grunts, holding back the scorching tidal wave building inside her small body with less and less success in each passing moment. “…i… just… rub my… little knob… oh! fuck! … how are you… doing that?…”

“You don’t play with the whole thing?” Riley asks, turning to look at Ellie, who is looking down at Riley’s body outlined beneath the sheets with curious, lustful eyes.

“… no… should i?” Young as she is, Ellie isn’t entirely new to this. She found a way that works and she stuck with it. She’s never considered other possibilities, apparently. She’s been doing it this way since that night in the Saint Philomena’s Children’s Home, when she was nine years old, lying in the darkness, listening to the hurricane battering the old building, needing to find a way to feel good and safe and she somehow discovered that it felt incredibly good to rub herself there. She didn’t even know it was a sex thing until she was twelve, but by then she didn’t care. If felt great, so she kept doing it, always the same way, the way that produced results for her. She suddenly fears that she might be stuck in her ways at the age of barely fourteen. Is she already stuck in a rut? She realizes this is a pun and wants to giggle. She doesn’t. She’s very proud of herself.

“Here, girl,” says Riley, giggling, drunkenly, lovingly. “Let me show you.”

Riley kicks off the covers, and they can see each other in the dim light from the window. Ellie groans with delight. She loves the sight of her friend naked. Riley has caught her peeking more than once, usually in the showers, but sometimes while they are changing clothes in this room. Riley has never called her on it, not once. Ellie is eternally grateful.

“… god… you are… so beautiful… miss riley…” Ellie sighs contentedly, smiling.

Riley manages to convince her left hand to let go of her own tender labia. She reaches over, slides her slick fingers over Ellie’s furiously working little hand. Their wetness mixes together between Ellie’s small fingers. She guides Ellie’s hand lower, feeling the hot mound of her younger friend’s engorged pussy lips underneath their entwined fingertips. Ellie shudders, gasps. She’s wanted this for so, so long. Riley places their linked hands together on Ellie’s searing hot sex, pressing down on the swollen, eager flesh. Ellie groans. Riley uses Ellie’s small hand to gently rub the younger girl’s full outer lips. Ellie grunts loudly into Riley’s shoulder. Ellie feels her lips being parted by her own fingers, obeying Riley’s command. The inner lips are so sensitive. She groans, her breath hot and wet against Riley’s neck. It feels so fucking good.

“Like this, see?” Riley coos, “It feels nice all over. Right?”

“… fuck yes it does… oh god…” Ellie trembles against Riley.

The older girl shows Ellie how to press the heel of her hand against her stiff clitoris while she positions Ellie’s small fingers near the opening of her little, quivering vagina. A strong, slim, brown finger pushes lightly but firmly against a smaller, white digit, coaxing Ellie to enter herself, gently, slowly, tenderly.

“… oh fuck…” Ellie shivers. She’d be embarrassed to admit it, but she has always been too nervous to penetrate herself like this. She was sure it was something she shouldn’t do for some reason. She can’t remember why she thought that. She can’t remember anything anymore. Riley made her do this, so she did. She’s so glad Riley is around to give her orders. She feels the muscular ring of her vagina tight on her fingertip, pulsing, throbbing, drawing the little finger inside, slowly, oh so slowly. Ellie feels herself contract, feels the texture of the inside of her vagina for the first time. It’s wet, warm, wonderful. There are ribs, grooves, wrinkles, straining muscles, and yet it’s as smooth and soft as a baby’s bottom too. It’s fucking amazing. She loves Riley, more than she ever has before. “… jesus… this is… incredible…”

“Ease it in, girl,” Riley murmurs with sweet, whiskey-smelling fumes, her hand pressed tightly to Ellie’s, guiding the girl’s palm in a tight, swirling motion over her clitoris and labia in a way that sends ripples of pleasure through her young friend. The act of touching Ellie like this drives her own body towards a greater hunger, a greater need, a greater heat. She can feel it building inside her. It won’t be long now.

“Oh fuck!” Ellie gasps, her pelvis tilting up, trying to reach Riley’s hand through her own, “Oh God! Riley! I’m… I can’t wait… I’m-“

“You didn’t ask me if you could come yet, boo,” Riley teases, trying to sound bossy and mean, commanding, like the asshole officers they deal with every day, but sexy too, as sexy and sultry as she can manage. She knows how Ellie is, what Ellie likes, maybe even more than Ellie herself does. Ellie likes to be bossed around by her older friend. This little girl won’t take shit from anybody else, but she seems to get off on it when Riley tells her what to do. Riley is going to test the limits of that tonight. She knows that the longer you can put off an orgasm, the better it feels. Ellie rushes to the finish, she rushes through everything. She doesn’t know when to stop and savor something. She doesn’t appreciate waiting. She never has. Riley’s going to teach Ellie all about that tonight. It will change Ellie’s life. But first she’ll have to bend Ellie to her will. She knows the girl will thank her for both those things.

“R-Riley…” Ellie gasps, “p-please… I can’t… I _need_ to…”

“Miss Riley. And say _please_ , girl, “Riley teases, growling just a little, squeezing Ellie’s hand tightly as it works at the exquisitely aching flesh. “Say please or I won’t let you come, little girl.”

“Oh fuck! Yes! Please! _Please_ , Miss Riley!” Ellie grunts, probably too loudly. Riley is glad that they’re at the end of the hall. There isn’t another dorm room on the other side of this wall, just a utility closet. If they keep it down, no one should hear them.

“Say it like you mean it,” Riley teases cruelly. She feels Ellie’s naked body tense and trembling, pressed tightly against her.

“P-Please! Please let me come, Riley! _PLEASE!_ ” Ellie wants to come, she needs it, she feels like she’s going to explode if she doesn’t climax, but she tries to hold it back, tries with all her might, for Riley, for herself. She wants to play this game with Riley all the way to the end. But she can’t wait much longer. She can’t. She wants to… needs to… she’ll die if she doesn’t… she’ll explode, melt, burst into flames, fly apart in a million pieces, die from the godawful wonderful terrible wave she’s almost at the crest of… “Fuck! _Please, Miss Riley! I’m-_ “

“Okay. You can come, Ellie. Go ahead.”

She does. She starts before Riley even finishes giving her permission. Her entire body goes rigid, her back lifts off the mattress, her ass too. She’s suspended in a long, graceful, lovely arch over the sheets, supported on her shoulders and her heels, with nothing between touching the bed. Her belly pulses with quick, shallow, quaking breaths, her thighs quiver with a mix of strain and release. Her ass is pulled tight, a compact pair of globes damp with sweat, almost dripping. Her nipples are hard, resting on the tiny, shifting hills of her breasts, dancing about as she trembles and shivers. Riley feels a momentary urge to take one of those gorgeous little tits into her mouth. Her lips part, her tongue slides out, unbidden. She inclines her head, ready to cross a line, ready to do something she knows she shouldn’t. She can’t stop herself. Ellie’s eyes are screwed shut tightly, she doesn’t see, she can’t now what Riley’s about to do. Riley can’t stop herself. That hard, pink nipple is so very close. Riley’s guiding hand presses down harder, putting more pressure on her young, squealing friend’s engorged clit, already crackling with the electricity flowing out from it. Ellie cranks her head back against the pillow, her mouth opens wide.

“OH GOD! RI-“ Ellie cries, much too loud, unable to control her voice.

Riley’s hand, the one on her pussy, flies up, clamps down on Ellie’s mouth, silencing her young friend, smearing those full, pink lips with her own wetness. Ellie cries and wails into the palm of Riley’s hand, tasting the deep, smoky, salty flavor of her beloved friend’s sopping wet cunt as she does. She is intoxicated by it, overcome with lust and love and devotion. She would give anything if Riley would just let her kiss her down there. She wants to worship Riley, offer devotions at that holy shrine.

“Shhhh,” Riley whispers, nuzzling close to Ellie. Riley is slowly coming back to her senses. She is glad that her young friend distracted her before she did something dumb, like sucking those little, perfect, beautiful tits. She rests her chin against Ellie’s warm forehead. “Quiet, boo. You don’t want anybody to hear us, right? We gotta be quiet, okay?”

Ellie nods, breathing heavily, drawing the sensual, aromatic smell of Riley’s pussy into her lungs with each shuddering breath, her small body down on the bed again, the last of the orgasm seeping out of her. Riley’s other hand still rests atop her own, both their fingers covering her pulsing, soaked, plump nether lips protectively. Ellie can feel the last of the amazingly powerful contractions fading away. Her little pussy is practically vibrating. She’s sure Riley must be able to feel it too, rippling through her, passing up through her hand into the wet, slick hand of her friend. She sighs, satisfied, happy, and so very much in love. Riley is her goddess now. She would spend all day of her life supplicating at that holy altar, soft and wet, brown and pink, if Riley would only permit it.

Riley kisses her forehead. She grins behind Riley’s hand. She kisses the back of those wonderful fingers. Riley giggles.

“Careful, boo,” she teases. “You don’t know where that hand’s been.”

Ellie takes a chance, hopes Riley won’t beat her into a pulp for this. She parts her lips, slips her tongue out, begins to lick lightly at the wet fingers covering her mouth.

“Daaaaaaaammmmn, Ellie,” Riley husks, surprised, at least more than she would have though she would be under these circumstances. “You are _dirty_ , little girl.”

Ellie giggles, reaches up with her free hand, pushes one of Rileys’ fingers into her mouth, begins to suck gently at the long, graceful, wet finger, coated with the taste of her best friend’s cunt.

“Fuuuuuuck,” Riley groans, taken aback at Ellie’s boldness. “I guess you really are a lesbian, huh?”

The word has never been said between them before, not like this, not in anything other than jest. It’s a truth about Ellie that they both know, but neither has ever had a need to give voice to it before.

“Yeah,” Ellie admits, slightly embarrassed, carefully easing out the words around her busy tongue as she licks and sucks at Riley’s finger. “I guess the truth is out now. Boys have never done much for me, Riley.”

“Miss Riley,” the dark goddess admonishes, trying not to groan at the amazing sensations Ellie is giving her. She can smell herself on Ellie’s hand, the scent mixes with the aroma of whiskey, making a wonderful, smoky, musky, spicy incense. They both inhale deeply.

“Yes, Miss Riley,” Ellie giggles, starting on a new finger, wet and delicious.

Riley chides her gently. “All this time, my little freshman roomie was a lezzie. I guess I gotta pay Linh for that bet I just lost. I put up a can of beer that you weren’t.”

“Really?” Ellie says, releasing Riley’s hand, rolling over on her side, propping herself up on one elbow, wanting to look down at her best friend. “I would’ve thought you woulda figured it out by now. I guess I’m better at keeping secret than I thought, huh?”

“Maybe,” Riley chuckles, looking up at Ellie above her, her auburn hair hanging loose, a dark drape hiding her face in the dim light. She reaches up and brushes it away, tucking it behind Ellie’s neck, wanting to see her young friend’s features in the soft glow of the streetlights. “Or maybe I’m just good at looking the other way.”

“Do you… I mean…” Ellie is hesitant now, nervous. The truth is out. This changes things between them. “Does it bother you? That I’m not… you know… into boys?”

“Bother me? I’m lying naked in this bed with you, aren’t I?”

Ellie giggles, overjoyed and embarrassed.

“Yeah.”

Can you blush with just your voice? Riley is pretty sure you can. She’s sure Ellie did it just now.

Ellie continues, her voice rich and heavy with a desperate hope. “Does this mean… you know… that you’re kind of that way too? A little bit?”

“Nah,” Riley says, dismissing the notion as coolly as she can. “I’m just drunk and horny. And I had to teach my little freshman apprentice a better way to play with herself, because I’m such a good friend. So don’t you go thinking that we’re girlfriends or anything, okay?”

“Okay, right. Sorry,” Ellie says, her voice indicating that she’s on the same page with Riley, the same, non-lesbian page. There is the hint of hurt somewhere behind those words, but Ellie is hiding it well.

Riley pulls Ellie down, slowly, closely, until their lips are very close. Ellie gasps, finds it hard to breathe. She is too afraid to even dare to hope where this might be going. With each quick little rabbit breath she takes, she smells Riley’s amazing cooch, the juices still warm and fresh in her mouth. Her breath is hot and delicious to Riley. The older girl wants very much to taste Ellie’s little virginal quim, to compare and contrast, but she doesn’t dare. Not yet.

Riley speaks, her breath warm with lust and whiskey. “Because otherwise, you might expect me to come down to the slums every night and lie here while we play with ourselves, right? You’d want me to do this every damn night, I bet. I swear, Ellie, I give you an inch and you take a mile.”

Ellie can smell the alcohol on Riley’s breath. Riley can smell her pussy on Ellie’s lips. They stay like that for a long moment, almost but not quite kissing. Ellie finds it hard to breathe, her body is tense, a need is rising inside her again. She whimpers, hating the sound, but unable to hide it from Riley. She needs this so much.

“Isn’t that right, new girl?” Riley says in her most smoky, sexy bedroom voice.

“Yes, Miss Riley,” Ellie whispers adoringly, submissively, obediently, like a good little love slave, leaning in, moving closer to Riley’s magnificent lips, just a little more, almost, almost… Give her an inch and she’ll take a mile.

Riley starts to speak, but she can’t find any words. Ellie is so close, unseen electricity sparks between their open, waiting mouths.

Ellie presses her full, pink lips against the darker, plumper lips of her best friend. They’re kissing. After so long, after so many nights wanting to do this, after so many months of circling her older friend, hoping and dreaming for this moment, this kiss… It is here at last.

The young girl groans, unable to contain her joy. Riley groans too, deeply, longingly. It’s the most wonderful sound. It fills the room, soft, hungry, echoing in every corner. She feels Riley’s hand on her face, caressing, stroking, savoring her, and the slowly, gently, pushing her away.

“No kissing, Ellie,” Riley scolds lovingly, a little short of breath. “Only one of us is a lesbian, remember?”

“But…” Ellie begins. It’s too much. She wants this, needs this, and Riley seemed to want it too, just for a moment. She feels too many emotions, all at once. It’s overwhelming. She’s not too proud to beg, for real this time. “ _Please_ …”

“We can’t,” Riley says, her breaths coming shallow and fast. She wants this too, Ellie can tell. Why won’t she give in to it? Riley doesn’t know the answer. It’s more than she’s ready for, more than she can handle, sober or drunk. Ellie would never suspect this truth. To her, there’s nothing Riley can’t do, nothing she can’t handle. She could never guess the conflict in her older friend’s heart tonight, the struggle between what her mind is telling her she should want to be true, and what her aching, yearning body knows to be true. Riley is scared, though Ellie would never believe it. Not for one second. “You can kiss all the girls you want, Ellie. But I’m… see… It’s… “

“You don’t want to kiss me?” Ellie tries not to sound hurt. She fails.

“I do,” Riley admits, sighing heavily in defeat. “But I shouldn’t.”

“But –“

“Just… Promise me, Ellie. No more kissing.”

“But, Riley… I… We…”

“Promise me,” Riley says, her voice hints at a need hiding behind another need. “Please, Ellie.”

Ellie rarely hears Riley say that word. She doesn’t understand, not really, not at all. But Riley needs this, more than she needs to be kissed, apparently. Ellie nods reluctantly.

“Okay, Riley,” Ellie agrees, and tries to make a joke of it, her way of coping. She forces out a tiny laugh. It almost sounds natural. “No kissing between friends. I don’t want you catching a case of the lesbians from me or anything.”

“Thanks, boo,” Riley giggles, her naked body shaking with barely-checked laughter. She sees Ellie watching her large breasts jiggle. She doesn’t mind.

“Buuuuuuuuuut,” Ellie begins, smiling, her teeth sparkling in the darkness, working up the nerve to say the words. “Don’t you want to come before you go to sleep tonight?”

“Yeah,” Riley smirks, caressing Ellie’s small shoulder. “I sure do. I don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep until I do. I’m so hot, I’m about to catch fire, girl.”

“Want me to take care of that for you?” Ellie says, trying to sound casual, and failing again.

“Ellie, “ Riley says, chuckling. Ellie is as persistent as she is funny. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Ellie says, her hand sliding across Riley’s bare stomach, bringing a groan out of her friend. “It would give me a chance to practice. You just taught me a whole new way to play with myself. I could practice those sweet moves on you, Riley. _Miss_ Riley, I mean.”

“Welllll…” Riley says, pretending to ponder this weighty matter.

“You could _order_ me to do it, Miss Riley,” Ellie coos, trying to sound sexy. “Then I’d have to do a good job. Or else you’d beat me up, right?”

“If you don’t do a good job, I’ll have to _spank_ you,” Riley teases.

“Okay, that right there? That is so _not_ the way to get me to do a good job, I gotta be honest.”

Riley explodes with laughter, Ellie hugs her close, thrilling at how Riley’s body trembles and convulses with the laughter she’s trying to hold inside. Ellie wonders if this is how Riley will feel pressed against her body when her older friend comes in a few minutes.

“In fact,” Ellie giggles softly into Riley’s ear, “I’d probably do the worst job ever just so you’d spank me extra hard, Miss Riley.”

“I know” Riley squeaks out, laughing harder now, “I really chose the wrong punishment, didn’t I? Must be drunker than I thought.”

Ellie laughs along with her until the moment passes. She lays Riley back on the pillow, slowly, gently. She wants to kiss her, but reminds herself of the promise she made. She nuzzles her graceful neck instead. Riley sighs as Ellie’s lips brush against her skin. Not a kiss, not technically. She’ll allow it.

Riley reaches down, begins to touch herself again.

“I’ll take care of it, Ellie. Just lay here with me, okay?”

“You sure? I can help,” Ellie says, her parted lips brushing lightly against Riley’s ear. Still not kissing. But only barely not.

“Oh fuck,” Riley groans. Ellie’s breath feels so hot and good on her ear, her cheek. She wants to turn her head, turn to face Ellie, to kiss this adoring, adorable young girl, kiss her and never stop. “Ellie, you’re driving me crazy with that.”

Ellie giggles and exhales in one luxurious, heady combination. Her hot, pussy-scented breath wafts across Riley’s cheek, across her eyelids, across lips. Ellie’s moist, searing heat spills into Riley’s mouth as she continues not to kiss her. Ellie’s lips linger near her friend’s mouth, near, so near to her lips. Riley groans, writhes. Her fingers work the scorching, slick folds of her cunt. Her breasts jiggle as she arches her back, trying to get this intense pleasure out of her before it burns her up. Ellie drifts down, her full, soft lips brushing lightly over Riley’s naked body as she goes, the young girl’s breath searing the skin of Riley’s jaw, her throat, her breasts. God, her breasts. They’re crying out for Ellie’s mouth. They need the girl’s ardent attention, they long for the presence of her lips, her tongue. Riley shudders, imaging the feel of Ellie’s teeth on her sore, hard nipples, biting, tugging, tormenting. Ellie brushes her lips lightly over them, teasing the aching tips of her breasts.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” Riley moans, “Ellie… Ellie…”

Her fingers work faster, the noise of her frantic efforts become louder. Ellie’s exhalations are scorching her nipples as Ellie almost but not quite kisses them, her mouth dancing at the edge of Riley’s dark, tender, enlarged nipples. The older girl groans, grunts, strains against the pressure building up inside her, filling her, searing her. It has to come out soon or she’s going to lose her mind.

“fuck… ellie… ellie… oh fuck… god…”

“Is it okay if I touch your boobs, Miss Riley?” Ellie purrs, each word sizzling on the tortured peaks of Riley’s aching breasts.

“…do it…” Riley moans, almost beyond reason now. “… hurry…”

Riley feels Ellie’s small hand cupping her breast, gathering it up. She blows a long, slow breath onto the swollen nipple. It is a wonderful kind of agony.

“God, these things are so big,” Ellie purrs, “Massive. Mine are so fucking little… They’re so squeezable… can I touch them? … like this?”

“… ellie… oh god… don’t stop…” Riley mumbles, gasping, closer and closer to the moment. “…more… god… _more_ …”

Ellie kneads the soft, warm, inviting flesh. She teases the hard, brown point with the tip of her velvety tongue, tracing small, incendiary circles around the edges of it. Riley gasps, she needs even more, but she’s too afraid to ask, too afraid to open that door. She knows if she goes though, she’ll never come back. She’s afraid of what lies on the other side and how it will change her. She wants that wet little tongue all over her body now. She craves it. Needs it. She’ll die without it. She can’t remember her life before it.

“I’m gonna touch your pussy too, Miss Riley,” Ellie coos, still flicking her tongue across Riley’s rock hard nipple. Riley doesn’t say it’s okay, but she doesn’t tell Ellie to stop either. She just groans, almost sobs, lost in a wordless, fabulous moment that carries her above this crappy place, away from every bad thing in her life, soaring high with Ellie in her arms, naked, warm, loving, the only good thing she has left.

Ellie’s small, white hand drifts down Riley’s firm, taut, brown belly, working its way through the tightly coiled patch of hair above Riley’s pussy, brushing lightly over it, tickling, teasing, tugging lightly at a few coils before coming to rest against Riley’s furiously working hands, pausing there, feeling the strength and the need in those strong, slim brown fingers before making its way slowly towards her trembling legs. Little white fingers skim lightly along smooth, sweet, mocha thighs, glistening with sweat, taut and trembling with barely contained lust. Riley groans. Ellie’s tongue moves in larger circles around her large, dark, tightened areola, leaving a trail of saliva behind that burns like lava. Riley can’t think anymore. She wants to come so badly, but she’s afraid to let go, she knows what she would do for Ellie, with Ellie, to Ellie, right now… all her young friend has to do is ask. Riley is at Ellie’s mercy for the first time in their friendship. She wants to be with Ellie forever now, just like this, caught between ecstasy and torment, crying out for release, forever. All Ellie has to do is ask, and Riley will be hers. All hers. Willingly. No holding back. All in. No more bluffing. Together, forever. All the little girl has to do is ask, anything she wants, just ask, and Riley will do it.

Ellie pulls Riley’s nipple into her mouth, sucking lightly at it. She makes the most wonderful slurping noises as she does so. Riley tries to say something, but she can’t. She tries to groan, but all that escapes her lips is a cracked, scalded, scraping noise. She’s lost all her words. Fuck ‘em. Good riddance. Words are Ellie’s things anyway. All Riley wants to be is a searing, scalding, volcanic cunt ready to erupt. Her fingers work in her, making louder and louder noises, it’s sloppy, wet, rhythmic, primal. Ellie’s small fingers find their way down her thigh, to her overheated pussy. Little fingertips explore the edges of Riley’s hot, slick labia, just under the edges of those desperate hands, teasing the brown fingers that are holding this blazing hot cunt open, spilling sweltering heat everywhere. Ellie slips around those straining fingers, feels the heat, the wetness, the soft, slippery skin of Riley’s exposed, quivering, naked honey pot.

“oh fuck! … ohfuckohfuckohfuck…” Riley wheezes, her voice cracking with every syllable.

She feels Ellie’s breath, hot and moist on her neck, on the side of her face. She knows Ellie is watching her intently in these final moments before she goes over the edge.

“oh god… ellie… i… i… oh fuck…”

“I want to kiss you so much right now, Miss Riley,” Ellie purrs, her voice thick and heavy with lust and love.

“… do it… come on…”

“You sure?”

“ _… fucking do it… hurry…_ ”

She doesn’t have to ask again. She feels Ellie’s fingers leave her pussy, feels Ellie’s arm tighten around her shoulder, her neck, feels Ellie pull her close, her soft lips finding Riley’s easily in the dark. Their mouths press together, jaws opening against each other, tongues sliding around, swirling, corkscrewing in their shared wetness. Riley wants that little tongue on her pussy. She’d given anything for Ellie to eat her out. She melts, going deeper into the kiss, terrified, certain that when Ellie stops kissing her, when the young girl comes up for a breath, she’s going to ask Ellie to bring that delicious little mouth down to her pussy and she knows Ellie won’t hesitate. She’s probably wanted to do that very thing for a long time. Riley can’t hold back. The words are starting to form. Ellie doesn’t have any experience at kissing, just a few secret make out sessions with her pillow, probably. She doesn’t know to breathe through her nose. She’s already pulling away. Riley can’t close her mouth, can’t stop the words, she’s lost, she’s going to be something different in a minute, something other that how she saw herself before. She’s going to say the words and she’ll belong to Ellie forever. She can’t hold them back. The words come out, unstoppable.

“Ellie –“

“I know! I _know_ ,” Ellie says, half-pleading, half-giggling. “ _Please_ don’t beat me up! I couldn’t help myself. You’re just so damn _sexy_ , Riley. _Miss_ Riley, I mean. God, I want you so much. I wish you were a fucking lesbian, I swear. I have the worst luck with dating. What sort of lesbo dork falls for a straight girl, right?”

Riley giggles, gasps. Ellie is so damn clueless, she can’t even guess at Riley’s distress.

Thank God - Riley thinks, her mind muddled - She doesn’t know - She won’t ask - I won’t have to go that far - I’m safe.

“Can I play with your tits some more? Is that okay?” Ellie asks, her hand sliding across Riley’s ribs, just under her swaying breasts.

God, I gotta come soon, Riley thinks. Please, I gotta come or I’m gonna come apart at the seams.

“I was wondering why you stopped, girl.” Riley groans, grinning, trying to sound cool and in charge of things, feeling some small measure of control over herself returning. “These sweet tits of mine aren’t gonna suck themselves, right?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Ellie is eager to please, as always.

Riley continues to work her poor, beleaguered pussy, still on the edge, so close, so fucking close, but not able to go over, too scared to let go. Still not able to come. Was this a mistake? She can’t be sure. She can’t think. It’s not fair. It never takes this long. It either happens or it doesn’t. It doesn’t stay right on the edge like this. What the fuck is wrong with her tonight?

“You little shit,” Riley groans, gasping, panting, her body rising with pleasure as Ellie caresses her tingling breasts, blowing hot air across her aching nipples. “How did you come so fast?”

“Well,” says Ellie playfully, lightly pinching one of Riley’s nipples, larger and rounder than her own, “I’m always horny. So that helps. And I have a vivid imagination. That _really_ helps.”

“Oh… yeah…” Riley moans, feeling it build inside her again, hoping it won’t just circle the edge again, needing to see this through, desperate to come. “… and what… were you… thinking… about…?”

“Ummm,” Ellie says, kissing a nipple very slowly, stalling for time. “I’d better not say.”

“Was it… Batman… ?” Riley giggles, losing her mind again as Ellie sucks her wobbling tits with eager, unskilled lips, dying to please her older friend, and getting it more right than wrong. Enthusiasm could overcome inexperience. Ellie was proving that tonight.

“Busted,” Ellie laughs, running her wet lips along the hard brown pebble atop Riley’s full, soft, jiggling breast, sending ripples of delight through her writhing friend. “It was Batman. He was spanking me, making me go down on him, making me play with his nipples, all sorts of stuff. It was super hot. But that’s how it always is when I think about Batman.”

“Shut up,” Riley chortles, trying to catch her breath. “I can’t come… if you keep making… me laugh.”

“Are you sure you can come? It’s been, like, fifteen minutes since you came down here, Riley. Maybe you’re too drunk or something? Is that possible?” Ellie laps at Riley’s taut areolas again, trying hard to help. The older girl’s nipples are usually kind of big and puffy; she rarely sees them all tight and puckered like this. She’d get Riley’s old Polaroid camera from the drawer if she wasn’t absolutely sure that Riley would kill her and hide her body in the dumpster downstairs.

“I…I just… I need to…” Riley can’t find any safe words to use. How can she explain this to Ellie. What could she possibly say that wouldn’t open that door she’s so afraid of?

“Umm… can I help?” Ellie asks. “I can keep playing with your boobs. Or kiss you. Or… you know… I could do… _that_.”

“That?” Riley grunts, her overwhelming need pushing her through her fear.

“I could… you know…” Ellie says sheepishly, “eat you out.”

Riley groans, a wordless reply.

“If you want, I mean.” Ellie’s voice is very soft. She doesn’t want to piss Riley off. She doesn’t know how close Riley is to giving in to her. She’s just a clueless virgin.

“Oh God,” Riley groans, light-headed, almost unable to breathe. “You’d… do that for me… Ellie?”

“Sure,” Ellie chirps, leaning close, her words warm on Riley’s cheek. She kisses her older friend just in front of her ear. Plants more kisses across her lovely, flushed face. “I’d eat you out. Hell, I’d eat your pussy all night, Riley. You _know_ I would.”

“…god… keep talking…” Riley grunts, close again, as close as she’s been all night.

Ellie grasps this quickly. Talking dirty. She’s heard all about this from Cherry Jackson, when she and Riley hang out and talk about sex while Ellie always sits quietly, listening and learning, not interrupting, paying attention, soaking in lessons she knows she’s much too young for. She can do this. She’s certain of it.

“I’d kiss your pussy from top to bottom, Miss Riley,” Ellie purrs into Riley’s ear, pausing to kiss that lovely brown skin. “I’d lick you inside and out… every inch of you… your pussy is so pretty… and delicious…”

“… fuck… so close… god…”

“I’d lick your clit… your lips… I’d lick your pussy hole…” Ellie murmurs into Riley’s ear, desperately wishing she knew more sex words that weren’t funny insults. Now hardly seems the like for ‘douche canoe’ or ‘panty hamster’ or ‘twat waffle.’

“… ahhhhh…. mmmmm… ellie… oh god… ellie…”

“I’d lick all you, Riley. _All of you_. I’d lick you where you pee,” Ellie purrs, wincing internally, fearing that her sexy talk isn’t sexy at all. Riley doesn’t seem to care. She seems into it. Ellie lifts herself up just a bit, bringing her lips close enough to Riley’s open, gasping mouth. Their breath mingles together as Ellie readies herself to kiss her older friend. Birthday brownies, vintage whiskey, and Riley’s sweet lady garden. She loves the intoxicating aroma they’ve made tonight.

“And in a minute… if you’ll let me… when you’re done with that… I’m gonna lick every one of your fingers clean,” she whispers.

“OH FUCK!” Riley exclaims, pushed over the edge at last.

Ellie brings their hungry mouths together as Riley groans loudly, coming hard. She knows they need to be quiet. She knows Riley will kill her for kissing her again. She knows everyone has to die, and this seems like a worthy cause. She feels Riley’s mouth pressing back, hard, against her lips, savoring this moment as she climaxes, and wondering if there’s a small chance that her best friend won’t beat her to death when she’s done coming. Riley’s tongue slips into her mouth and Ellie starts to hope.

“mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….” Riley moans into Ellie’s mouth, long and deep, almost a wailing sound. Sad? Joyous? Something in-between?

The vibration of the keening sound feels so good to Ellie’s tongue, twisting its way around the inside of Riley’s mouth. Her older friend seems to be going limp and rigid at the same time. She shudders and jerks against Ellie’s small body. Ellie holds her tight and never stops kissing her.

Riley tries to catch her breath, tries to pull in enough air through her nostrils, but it’s no good. She feels herself getting light-headed. The orgasm isn’t ending. Somehow it’s getting stronger as it goes, building and building, with no end in sight. She fears she’s going to rub her poor pussy raw, but she doesn’t care, doesn’t stop. Her body pulses and rocks with an incandescent energy boiling out from the center of her. Her aching cunt convulses, so does her belly, her asshole, her thighs, all pulling tight with the unleashed desire. Her toes curl, her fingers clutch at herself, pressing tight against her thick, juicy labia, wet and slick with so much pent up lust finally gushing out, unleashed, like a broken dam. She feels scalding hot, thin fluid squirting out of her pussy. She’s never experienced that before. She’s making a mess everywhere. Her hands can’t hold the gushing torrent back. It’s getting everywhere. She doesn’t care. Her back arches, invisible electricity arcs between her nipples, dances along the skin of her stomach, her neck. Ellie’s mouth burns against her lips like a brand, marking her as belonging to the young girl now. Riley whimpers, almost cries. She takes solace in the comforting wetness of Ellie’s tongue, warm and soothing inside her mouth. She’s Ellie’s girl now, if only the kid will ask. That’s all it will take. She wants her to hurry, to ask before it’s too late, before she comes down from this high, before she comes to her senses, before she remembers how young Ellie is, before her tortured, agonized pussy stops erupting this mysterious wetness all over Ellie’s mattress.

Hurry! Hurry! She wants to say. Hurry, before it’s too late! Ask me, Ellie! Ask me to run away with you. Ask me to be your girlfriend, your lover. Ask me to fucking marry you, if that’s what you want. Hurry! Ask me before I remember how much I shouldn’t want this! Ask me! Ask me! Hurry! Please!

But Ellie says nothing. She just continues to kiss her with a crazy, passionate desperation, as though she’s certain that her best friend is going to stuff her room temperature body in the downstairs dumpster just a few minutes from now, when she comes back to her senses and snaps Ellie’s misbehaving, promise-breaking, lip-smooching, neck. Riley feels herself coming down. She feels the “Real Riley” coming back. She wants to cry. She’s not sure why, so she lays there instead, limp, safe in Ellie’s cradling arms. She gasps for breath, Ellie finally releasing her from the smoldering kiss. She’s no longer squirting. She doesn’t know when she stopped. It drips from her limp fingers, dangling uselessly in front of her throbbing pussy.

“Riley… I…” Ellie needs to say something. She struggles with the words.

“I… know…” Riley gasps breathlessly. “It’s all… good… boo.”

“Oh God, thank you,” Ellie whispers, giggling softly. “Thanks for not killing me. I kinda broke my promise, huh? Sorry. Really. I got carried away. I know I shouldn’t’ve done it.”

Riley chuckles weakly, her body trembling. She pants for breath as she tries to make words. “Yeah… just a little… I’ll overlook it… this one time…. But next time, I’m punching you for that… right in the butthole… Gonna snap my fist off in there.”

“God, you’re so kinky, Riley.” Ellie giggles, smiles, snuggles close. Riley reaches over, rests a comforting hand on Ellie’s slender hip.

“Stay,” Ellie pleads softly. “Stay down here with me, Riley. Just for tonight, okay?”

“You think I should?” Riley murmurs, still breathing deeply. “Been a long time since I was down in the slums. You live in a pretty bad neighborhood, girl. I don’t wanna get shivved or nothing.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” Ellie giggles. “I know this girl, a real badass. She looks after me.”

“She the jealous type?” Riley grins, resting her chin against Ellie’s forehead as the younger girl snuggles against the hollow of her neck. “Very much. She finds us down here in bed like this? She’s liable to kill us both. See… I’m kind of… well… saving myself for her, you know?”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. And I’m hoping she’ll climb in bed with me one of these nights and tell me that she’s going to spank me until my ass catches on fire and then tell me I have to eat her pussy until my jaw falls off. She’s all romantic and stuff like that. Super classy.”

“Wow,” Riley giggles, “I can see why you’re saving herself for her.”

“Yeah. She’s pretty awesome. And, God, is she sexy. She’s, like, a goddess.”

“Well, maybe one of these nights,” Riley says, pulling Ellie close, cuddling, ready for sleep, “maybe she’ll wise up and spank that ass of yours and then shove your head between her legs and you two can stay like that forever and ever, until she smothers you to death with her amazing pussy.”

“You really think so?”

“If she’s smart, she will,” Riley yawns, sleepy and tired now. Twenty minutes of intense masturbation can take a lot out of a girl. “Only a dumbass would let a girl like you get away.”

“She’s not a dumbass,” Ellie says, making a small nodding gesture against Riley’s chest. “I know she’s not. She’ll wise up… one of these days.”

“Tell you what, boo,” Riley yawns, feeling the wet spot beneath her turning cold and unpleasant, “let’s sleep up in my bed, okay?”

“Sure. That’s fine.”

Riley climbs out of bed, stands there, naked and unashamed, smiling, waiting as Ellie slides across the mattress to join her. The girl squeals when she hits the wet spot.

“Eeew! What the fuck is this?”

“I came pretty damn hard, girl,” Riley shrugs, as though it’s no big deal. “I think I sorta peed the bed a little.”

“Ick!” Ellie says, trying to lever her ass over the spot without touching it. “That can happen? Really?”

“Apparently, yeah,” Riley laughs, trying to play it off, cool and experienced as ever, indicating that Ellie should be the first one up to the top bunk.

“Wow,” Ellie says, climbing up to the to bunk, hoping Riley will slap her ass as she does. It’s right there, hanging out for the world to see, so round and so slappable. How can she not? “How hard do you have to come before you pee on yourself?”

“Pretty hard, I’m proud to say. It’s not something the average girl can do, I bet,” Riley says smugly, holding one hand tightly with the other, keeping them safe in place across her belly. Ellie’s little bubble butt is right there. _It’s right fucking there_. And it needs to be spanked. Hard! But, oh hell, what a can of worms that would be to open.

If I spank her tonight, Riley cautions herself, I’ll have to spank her every damn night until I leave. She’ll misbehave on purpose, be as bad as she can, just to make me smack her ass again and again.

She follows Ellie up, that cute little butt lamentably unsmacked, and snuggles in close to her. Riley pulls the sheet tight around their shoulders, hopes she won’t fall out of the bed tonight. Sleeping on the edge is usually Ellie’s job when the two of them are up here.

“You know,” Ellie says softly, “I’m gonna need your help cleaning that up in the morning. I don’t want Bobby or one of those assholes thinking I wet the bed the next time they do an inspection.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s too late anyway. I’m spreading the rumor that you’re a bed wetter as soon as I see Tino and Jamaad at the chow hall tomorrow.”

“Jeez, Riley,” Ellie snickers. “You are such a dick to me.”

“You don’t want it any other way, girl.” Riley purrs drunkenly and lovingly into Ellie’s ear. “You wouldn’t like it if I was nice to you all the time.”

“How would I knooooww?” Ellie moans dramatically, playfully. “You’ve _never_ been nice to me.”

Riley laughs, smacks the side of Ellie’s butt lightly, scolding her affectionately. “You little bitch! I oughta smack the hell out of you for that.”

Ellie groans with lust, arches her back in barely contained joy. It feels so good when Riley does that.

“God, Riley. If you do that, then you’re never getting rid of me!” Ellie shudders, wanting more abuse.

Riley growls quietly into Ellie’s ear. “If it wouldn’t wake up the entire hallway, I’d spank the hell out of you right here and right now, little girl.”

Ellie shudders, squirms, whispers. “Fuuuuuuuuuucck…”

“Because you deserve it,” Riley breathes into Ellie’s ear. “ _Don’t you?_ ”

“Yes. But this is just proving my point, Riley,” Ellie groans, snickers. “You _are_ mean to me. So there!”

They giggle. They spoon together as tight as they can. They bask in the new sensation of their naked bodies pressed together. They sigh, happily, still a little drunk. Ellie wishes Riley would spank her a little more, but further punishment doesn’t come. She smiles. Maybe tomorrow.

Minutes pass. The clock ticks. The night slips away, stolen from them in small fistfuls, taking more and more of Riley’s remaining freedom with it. Ellie will be alone soon; the knowledge makes the young girl shiver with dread. She presses back against Riley more tightly.

“You cold?” Riley asks, not understanding, sitting up. “Here, I’ll pull the covers up.”

“Thanks,” Ellie says, snuggling under the thin army blanket as it’s draped over them. She sighs contentedly, pressing her body close to Riley again, enjoying the comforting, baby soft feeling of Riley’s skin on hers, basking in the glow of being sexually satisfied and totally butt naked with her best friend. Ellie grins, her head resting in the crook of her best friend’s arm. Riley’s thighs are tucked close behind hers, strong and snug. Large, soft breasts are pressed against her bare back. Hot breaths play across the back of her neck, a loving breeze. Riley’s heart beats close to Ellie’s, a steady, comforting rhythm. She’s in bed with Riley, naked with Riley, being held by Riley. It’s a pretty fucking amazing feeling. With great affection, she lightly kisses the inside of Riley’s arm, just above the crease of her elbow, the brown skin so warm and soft there, the best pillow she’s ever known. “You’re so awesome, Riley.”

“You know I am,” Riley says smugly. She plants a single, drunken, loving kiss on Ellie’s slender neck, just under her ear. Ellie grins, squeezes her friend’s hand, their fingers snug together across the younger girl’s belly, holding her to her older friend tightly. Riley knows she’ll be sober tomorrow. She knows this will be awkward when she wakes up. She knows it’s going to feel weird to wake up naked with an equally nude young Ellie in her arms. But tonight it feels right. Tonight is all that matters. Tonight is all she has. Fuck tomorrow.

There is no tomorrow. There never was.

 

**[May 14, 2033]**

**[0001]**  
Riley sleeps like a baby for the first time in years.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This extended one-shot was originally meant to be the opening chapter to volume two of “Flying To Wyoming,” but as I worked on it, the story grew to a ridiculous length. And since I’m a little behind on volume two (I’ve been working lots of twelve hour shifts this summer), I’m releasing this story as stand alone prologue to the upcoming volume. Hopefully it will tide you guys over for another month or so until “Miles To Go”, the second volume, is ready to post. Now on to the other notes:
> 
> I gave Riley the middle name Payton because, despite my best efforts, I couldn't find out what Yaani King’s middle name is. And Payton, like Riley, is a unisex name.
> 
> The music in the dorm room is “Space Age Love Song” by A Flock Of Seagulls. I do not apologize for that. ;-)
> 
> I actually own a small airline bottle of Tullamore Dew. I bought it at an estate sale a few months ago. I haven’t opened it yet. Maybe once I’m done with this story…
> 
> I’d like to thank my girlfriend Michelle for insight and support, as always. The world of teenage girls is a strange one, and she makes those waters a little easier to navigate.
> 
> And that’s that. See you guys here again in a month or so for “Miles To Go,” the middle volume of the Flying To Wyoming saga – a pretentious word for my fanfic, but again, I do not apologize for that ;-)


End file.
